


Into the Depths

by Ribbonsflying



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alpine the Cat (Marvel) - Freeform, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Atlantis, Based on a film, Catatonic Bucky Barnes, Exploration, Inspired by Disney, Kissing, Linguist Steve Rogers, M/M, Minor Character Death, Non-Graphic Violence, Prince Bucky Barnes, Rumlow is a jerk, Sea Monsters, Shipwrecks, Underwater
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-12
Updated: 2021-02-15
Packaged: 2021-03-18 13:54:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 31,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29369589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ribbonsflying/pseuds/Ribbonsflying
Summary: If you've seen the Atlantis Disney film, you know the plot.Linguist Steve Rogers isn't expecting much when he is digging around in a warehouse of things left to him by his deceased family members, but what he finds is a map to possibly the greatest treasure ever lost- The City of Atlantis.The team he takes on the exploration with him think they are looking for Atlantis, but truly, Atlantis is looking for them. Or, at least, its crown prince is looking for Steve.With the hopes that the team can help save his dying city, Prince James takes them with him on what turns out to be an adventure and maybe an accidental love story.(This fic is completely written.)
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 9
Kudos: 41
Collections: Marvel Reverse Big Bang 2020





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Britt_pknapp](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Britt_pknapp/gifts).



> Please check out [the wonderful art](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29369841) Brittany made to inspire this fic.  
> It can be found here (but it may contain minor spoilers for anyone unfamiliar with the storyline).
> 
> Written for Marvel Reverse Big Bang 2020 for [Britt_Pknapp](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Britt_Pknapp) who apparently loved the Disney film when she was younger. Thank you, Brittany, for all of your extraordinary patience and kindness and insane fantasy prompting. I hope it does justice to your childhood favourite, especially since I have now watched it more than I think most childless adults ever have.
> 
> Beta'd by Pam who was long-suffering enough to make her way through the entire (awful) rough draft of this story and still not throw things at me. I appreciate your hard work.
> 
> And thank you to the others who have helped here and there with things large and small, namely Lillaby, Kelsey, Mary, and Jo. Your helpfulness, encouragement, and assistance are immensely appreciated.

  


“Nothing is ever fully a myth, Steven.”

Those were the words Steve could still hear echoing in his head thirty years after his grandfather had spoken them.

So many memories seemed to lie waiting as Steve went through his late mother’s things. Sarah Rogers had passed a year before, but Steve hadn’t been able to go through anything at the time. The only child of Irish immigrants who had both passed away now left Steve rather alone so after Sarah Rogers had died, he had thrown himself into work to avoid confronting how absolutely alone he felt. But now going through the storage building where he had had all of her things packed away was bringing back old memories but this one was far stronger than Steve had initially realized.

“I can’t believe this is still here,” he spoke in amazement. He was sitting cross-legged on the dusty floor of the storage locker in between mountains of boxes of housewares and furniture. He’d hit on photo albums and artwork she had saved that he had created for his refrigerator masterpiece collection during his younger years. But preserved at the bottom of the box was a thick leather-bound journal he remembered from when he had been only six years old and gone to visit his mother’s family in Ireland.

His elderly grandfather had opened it up, pulled out folded maps-

Steve carefully unbound the strap holding the diary closed and out fell a plethora of loose pages- maps, lists, pictures. 

He thought at first it was family history, until he had picked up the first map, unfolded the brittle pages, and found himself staring at a language he never thought he would see outside of pictures from mythology.

That’s how he found himself immersed for the next two hours trying to decipher lines of text on a few maps and some loose pages that had been paper clipped together. Steve had three different degrees in linguistics and spoke over twenty active languages and ten dead ones. If anyone was going to be able to decipher it, it was him.

But even without the knowledge of multiple languages, he was quite sure he could read the map perfectly.

He could draw this shoreline by heart. After all, he had seen it everyday, hanging above his desk. This new map though was a little different from what he had memorized. Not too far from the submerged Atlantic mountain range was a landmass. Steve was quite positive that landmass had never made it onto the map above his desk or any other map he had ever seen.

He held the map out before pulling it closer to his face again, trying to decide if he was really seeing the things that he was seeing.

The conversation kept playing out in his head again and again. He had seen this map thirty years ago. He had been very young and impressionable and listening to a batty old Irishman rattle on, but his grandfather Stiofán, his namesake, had grabbed him by his scrawny little shoulders and said, “Nothing is ever fully a myth, Steven,” and then, years, decades later, left him this information. 

Steve stared at the word he had deciphered from where it was written across the map’s mysterious landmass and then hastily packed everything back up, only taking the leather bound journal and all of its loose papers and pictures with him. 

There was a payphone a few blocks from the warehouse and Steve called his work supervisor.

“Call a meeting. Tomorrow morning. Call a meeting. It’s something so important that I’m sure everyone will want to know!” he said delightfully. “I’ve found a map to the greatest historical mystery of all time.”

Steve was quiet for a second listening to the voice at the other end of the phone before looking down at the journal in his hands and whispering, “Atlantis.”

—⍟-⍟-⍟— 

“Just- just hear me out!” Steve was sputtering as various old men in business suits got up from the meeting and began to walk out. 

Steve had drawn a map on a large chalkboard and brought the book he’d recovered from his mother’s things. 

“It’s a journal!” Steve was struggling to explain, “From a man who kept records better than God himself. He didn’t just collect nonsense. He must have had some way to know that the location was real. The place really existed. And we can find it.”

More men were shaking heads as they stood up to leave, shaking hands with each other as though Steve were no longer there. Steve started to panic. He pushed his glasses up with the back of his hand and held up a map with the old language written on it.

“This is their language and I’ve- I’ve been figuring it out. I don’t know how to pronounce it, but I’m deciphering it and it gives us geographical markers. It tells us exactly where they were located. And I think if we could just get together a team, a few people with an underwater camera, we could find the ruins of the greatest lost nation!”

By the time Steve was finished with that part of his plan, only a small handful of men were left and none of them were even pretending to look up at the front of the room where he stood sweating and sputtering and waving a journal. 

“It won’t cost much!” Steve was grasping at straws, waving his map around and notably losing the very few men who had still been left seated. 

His boss stood up last and sent Steve a deeply disappointed look before shaking his head and heading after the other men out the door. 

“Mr. Phillips!” Steve tried desperately. “I can _prove_ Atlantis exists. If it’s anything like they say, I can make you the richest man in America, maybe the world!”

“Mr. Rogers,” his boss and the museum’s owner spoke exasperatedly, “This museum helps to fund projects that will positively result in significant historical, cultural, and scientific finds and revelations. We do not go on wild goose chases after fictitious lands. We would become a laughing stock.”

“But-“

“Much like _you.”_

The hand holding the journal dropped down by Steve’s side.

“Mr. Phillips, I was hoping it wouldn’t come to this-“

He turned around and went back to the podium he had originally started speaking behind earlier and pulled out a piece of folded paper from the back of a notebook. 

“I have to resign from my position here at the Museum of World History.” He held out the folded paper.

Mr. Phillips snatched the paper from Steve’s hand and didn’t even pause as he threw it directly into the garbage bin beside the door. 

“Nonsense, Rogers. This place needs you. It’ll be winter again soon and we need someone who knows how to fix the boilers.”

“When I started here,” Steve reminded desperately, “You assured me I could work on new discoveries and with new designs and helping translate old books and etchings and-“

“I know I did, Mr. Rogers, but we haven’t needed that and we _have_ needed someone to fix the boiler when it goes on the fritz and to change lightbulbs and clean up when there’s a leak in the ceiling or a burst pipe in the basement. You’ve done a lot of good for us. You wouldn’t leave now, would you?”

Steve closed one hand around the spine of the journal and clenched the other hand into a fist. 

“I’m sorry, but the resignation stands,” he announced firmly. He stepped back to the podium, grabbed his notebooks, and turned on his heel. This place was only holding him back.

—⍟-⍟-⍟— 

It was pouring rain as Steve walked home to his apartment from where the train had let him off in Brooklyn Heights. The box of things he’d cleaned out of the basement (which substituted as his office at the museum) took both of his hands to carry so there hadn’t been any room for holding an umbrella and as such, by the time Steve put his key in the lock and pushed the door open to his apartment, every inch of his clothing was soaked through and his good shoes now made uncomfortable squelching sounds with every step.

He barely made it in the door before the already precarious box dropped onto the floor of the tiny tiled space. (A small puddle forming around him,) he wondered if he should just strip out of all of his clothes right then and there. 

He fumbled for the light, but before he could hit the switch, lightning flashed, lighting up the room and Steve’s heart skipped a beat. 

Propped lazily against his wall only feet in front of him was a figure. A woman with red hair pulled back into a sleek bun and dressed in all black stood, seemingly dry and insistent in his path.

“Steven Grant Rogers?” she spoke in a deep, raspy voice. It was posed like a question, but it was obvious it wasn’t.

Steve heard himself gulp as his fingers flicked on the light. Or, he tried to, but nothing happened. He flicked it back and forth a few times as if that would magically work. 

“Wh-who are you? H-h-how did you get in here?” he heard himself sputter, still fiddling with the light switch.

“I came down the chimney,” the woman replied flatly before letting her arms hang and her coat fall open to reveal a low cut dress beneath. “Ho ho ho.”

Steve dropped his hand from the switch and backed up until his back was pressed, soddenly, against the door.

“Natasha Romanov,” she continued as the lightning lit her and the room up again. “I’m here with a proposition for you from my employer.”

Steve shivered either from being wet and cold or from the chill of Natasha’s presence. 

“Who is your employer?” 

—⍟-⍟-⍟— 

The rain was still coming down heavily as Steve looked out of the back windows of the sleek black limousine Natasha had waiting for them as soon as he had agreed to come with her. Wrought iron gates opened and they drove under an arch with an embellished letter 'S', and fancy hedges lined the drive as they pulled in close enough to see the mansion.

“Step lively,” Natasha told him as he shook off at the rain water just inside the door. A butler took Steve’s coat and umbrella before Steve followed Natasha down a long corridor with rich tapestries and rugs adorning it.

She let herself into the large doors at the end of the hallway and Steve tried to quietly and politely slip into the room behind her. Until he stepped in and realized it was just an oversized elevator.

“You will address him as ‘Mr. Stark’ or ‘Sir,’” she informed Steve as she began to tug and straighten his vest and shirt. “You will stand unless asked to be seated. You will keep all comments short and to the point. Understood?”

Steve nodded a bit uneasily as the elevator came to a stop.

“And relax,” Natasha added, ushering Steve rather forcefully from the elevator and into the dimly lit room. “We haven’t had to carry a body out of here in ages.” The elevator doors slid closed on her icy smile.

Steve felt a shiver run down his spine as he crept away from the closed elevator doors and across the plush, luxury carpet of the enormous room. It was filled with bookshelves and statues, plants, artwork, taxidermy animals, and a large, blazing fireplace.

Steve glanced around the walls until a large, framed photograph caught his eye. “Grandpa?” he whispered.

“Finest explorer I ever met,” came a jolly voice from across the room. 

Steve jumped anyway and spun around to see a man dressed in a bathrobe and eating a banana sandwich. 

“You really knew my grandpa?” Steve asked before he could stop himself. 

“Oh yeah, pal,” the man replied around a mouthful, “We go way back. The two of us explored Europe and both of the Americas together till the end of his days. Even dragged me along on some of his more insane expeditions.” Howard tossed his half-eaten sandwich onto a plate and into a chair nearby. “Crazy as a fruit bat,” he said with a laugh as he walked toward the fireplace, “But he spoke of you often, Steven.”

“Funny,” Steve replied, feeling like this guy was a joke and the real Howard Stark was going to step out from around the corner any second. “He didn’t ever speak of you.”

“Nah, he wouldn’t,” came the quick reply, “Knew how much I hated getting my name tied up in anything less than absolute science. Wild and foolish goose chases were _his_ thing.”

Steve arched an eyebrow and looked around the room. It seemed Howard had done his fair share of exploring and insanity himself if the taxidermy water buffalo was anything to go by. 

“Mr. Stark,” he asked, settling his hands on his hips. “Should I be wondering why I’m here?”

“Oh, yeah,” Howard answered with a nod toward the desk in the corner. “Look on that desk. There’s something for you.”

Steve looked over at the desk piled high with books and stacks of paper, pens and pencils, a telephones, a typewriter, and a snow-globe about to fall off the edge.

He pushed the snow-globe back into place and peered around for what Howard could be talking about when it caught his eye. On top of a stack of books in the corner was a thick manilla envelope, sealed, dusty looking, and addressed to him. 

Steve picked it up and wiped some dust from it to see the familiar handwriting. His heart skipped a beat. This was the same handwriting he had spent hours looking at while reading the overstuffed journal he had found among his mother’s possessions.

“Grandpa Stiofan?” he asked quietly. To his surprise, the envelope looked as if it had been sealed for ages, never tampered with in any way, but his grandfather had died when he was ten and Steve hadn’t seen him since his own visit to Ireland when he was a six year old boy. Why would he have addressed an envelope to him? And furthermore, why would Howard Stark have it?

As if reading his thoughts, Howard laughed. 

“Open it up!” he piped up. “Ol’ Stiofan always was crazy, but he told me you were destined to be ‘The One’ and to only give that to you when you were ready.”

Steve picked up a letter opener on the desk and neatly ran it down the folded flap of the envelope, opening it, and sliding out the papers inside. The pages looked old. They matched the pages in the journal. 

Only instead of English or Gaelic like the rest of the journal had been written in, these pages were entirely in-

Steve gasped. 

“This is it,” he told Howard immediately. “Mr. Stark, these pages are the key to finding the lost continent of Atlantis.”

“Atlantis,” Howard scoffed and began to walk off. “You sound as crazy as he always did.”

Howard walked off into an open closet and Steve followed, staying just outside the door. His eyes were glued to the pages, flipping through them in amazement.

“No, no, it’s all here. Before I only had one map with a vague idea, but this? It’s a number of very specific maps, coordinates, even mapping the depth.”

Howard stuck his head out of the closet door to quickly glance at the page Steve was reading. 

“It all looks like gibberish to me,” he replied with a shake of his head before ducking back into the closet. “Probably just more of Ol’ Stiofan’s ramblings.”

“No, it’s not gibberish at all,” Steve insisted. “It’s just written in a dialect that no longer exists.”

“So it’s useless,” Howard assured him.

“Nah, nah, just difficult.” Steve began holding up pages and tilting his head to better understand the language and the maps. “But I’ve spent my whole life studying dead languages. They’re different, but they’re not gibberish. They’re brilliant, really. You just have to take time to figure them out and luckily, this one, I’ve seen before.”

“Ah, it’s probably a fake!” Howard laughed as he stepped out of the closet now suddenly dressed in a very nice three-piece suit. “Most antiquarian discoveries are these days. Just forgeries to make some money.”

“Mr. Stark,” Steve argued politely, “With all due respect, my grandfather would have known if this were a fake. You said it yourself that he spent his life exploring. And I know the information that I have already found from him is not a work of fiction. I would stake everything I have, my reputation, my life on this being the genuine artifact. These directions are _real.”_

Howard walked over and opened a drawer. He pulled out a gold watch and cufflinks to add to his dapper apparel.

“Well, okay then. What do you plan to do with it?”

Steve put down the page he was studying and looked at Howard.

“I’ll get funding!” he announced. Across the expansive room was an aquarium that took up much of the wall and he followed Howard toward it explaining his plan. “I’ll take this back to the museum.”

“They’ll never believe you,” Howard dismissed as he picked up a decanter of sherry and poured himself some.

“They’ll have to believe me now! I’ll show them this and then they’ll believe it. I will _make_ them believe!”

“Like you did today?” Howard laughed scornfully as he sat down in a large armchair and looked at the fish.

“Yes!” Steve was brimming with excitement now. “Well, no. Wait. How did you-“  
He shook his head and held the pages out, emboldened. “Never mind. Forget about that. That was before! This is now! Forget about them! I don’t need _them._ I will find Atlantis on my own! Even if I have to rent a rowboat!”

Howard sat back and looked at Steve with a smug smile. 

“Congratulations, Steve.”

Steve stopped mid-soliloquy.

“Forget the rowboat, son,” Howard announced as he pressed a button on a little table beside him. “We’ll travel in style.”

A large box Steve had previously, erroneously assumed was a table suddenly opened up and revealed a small ship unlike anything Steve had ever seen.

“A submarine?” he whispered, bending down to look at the scale model. One glance up at Howard told Steve that he had been played from the moment he walked in. “Why?”

“For years, your crazy old grandpa bent my ear with stories about his findings. But I didn’t buy any of it, even for a second. So finally, I got fed up and I made a bet with that old dingbat. I said, ‘Rogers, if you ever find the actual location of Atlantis, written by the Atlaneans themselves, I won’t only fund your dumbass, deep dive, but I’ll kiss you full on the mouth.”

Steve snorted. 

“Imagine my embarrassment when the old geezer actually found the thing.” He stood up out of the chair and set down the glass of sherry in order to pass Steve a photograph of the funniest picture either of them had ever seen. It was a black and white image of Steve’s grandfather wiping his mouth and making a disgusted face while a much younger version of Howard Stark stood beside him grinning from ear to ear.

“You two must have been close,” Steve realized aloud.

Howard nodded once and looked fondly at the picture before setting it aside and walking toward the fireplace. 

“Now, I know your grandfather is gone, Steve, but Howard Stark is a man who keeps his word.” He grabbed the fire poker and brandished it like a sword toward the picture of Steve’s grandfather. “You hear that, Rogers? I’m going to the afterlife with a clear conscience!”

Steve laughed to himself as he abandoned the model submarine and followed Howard back over to the fireplace and near enough to see the large framed photograph clearly again. 

“Ah,” Howard said fondly yet solemnly as he too looked up at the image. “Your grandfather was a good man, Steve.” 

Steve nodded.

“He tried to present his ideas to the museum too,” Howard continued. “They turned him into a laughing stock. Like he was asking for an expedition to hunt down Neverland.”

“I know the feeling.”

“He died a broken man. But those fools deserve to be proven wrong. You’re absolutely right about one thing. You don’t need them. And I’d give anything to have even just one shred of proof that the old man was right.”

Howard looked back and forth between Steve and the old picture again. “Ah, Rogers.”

They stood there in silence a moment- Howard looking at the mounted picture and Steve staring into the fireplace. 

Then suddenly, Howard was animated again and hurrying back across the room. 

“What are we waiting for? We’ve got work to do!”

“But, Mr. Stark,” Steve rushed, tripping after him, “In order to do what you are proposing, we’re going to need a crew. We can’t just go by ourselves!”

“Already taken care of!”

“We will need engineers... and... and... geologists! Some experienced seamen and-“

“Got ‘em all!” Howard chimed. “The best of the best!” He waved out a folder with numerous files inside and handed it to Steve who opened it immediately.

“Clint Barton, geology and excavation. Looks dumb as a box of rocks, but he knows more than a thing or two about them,” Howard announced, seemingly knowing the top file without even looking at it. “Thor Odinson, demolitions.” He continued as Steve flipped through the files. “Busted him out of a prison in New Mexico. Peter Parker. Don’t let his age fool you. That boy has forgotten more about engines than you or I will ever know. He’s read some of your grandfather’s publishing’s and signed on immediately. These guys already believe you. All we need now is an expert in Gibberish.”

Steve’s head shot up from the files to look at Howard.

“Close your mouth. You’re gaping like a fish,” Howard commented and Steve shut his mouth so fast his jaw made an audible snap.

Steve looked down at the files again and back at Howard trying to process all of the knowledge he was being flooded with.

“That means it’s decision time, Steve. You can go back and fix the boilers at the museum. Or you can build on the foundation your grandfather left for you.”

Steve flopped back into a chair and Howard sat across from him. 

“This is real,” Steve said to himself. 

“Now you’re catching on.”

“I’ll have to quit my job.”

“I was under the impression you did that before you came here.”

Steve nodded quickly, suddenly remembering. “Yeah, this afternoon.”

“I called and made sure of it,” Howard quipped. “I don’t like to leave loose ends.”

“Uh, my apartment. I’ll need to give notice.”

“Already did.”

“What?”

“They know.”

“Uh. Uh. I’ll have to put my things into storage.”

“Happening as we speak.”

“My books. My clothes. My cat?”

“Some packed. Some stored. And it seems he needs a pet carrier.”

“Oh?”

“Don’t worry. Natasha’s handling it.”

Steve was glad he was already sitting down. His head was spinning. His heart was racing. He felt an odd sense of dizziness and he closed his eyes to keep it all together. 

“Your grandfather told me once, more than once, ‘our lives are remembered by the gifts we leave our children.’” Howard stood up and picked up the pages from the manilla envelope. He held them out to Steve with a wrinkled hand. “This knowledge is his gift to you, Steve. Atlantis is waiting.”


	2. Chapter 2

Steve found out very quickly how easily he got seasick. The first few days on the ship to Ireland were spent just trying to eat something that he could keep down. Which is how he first became friends with Sam Wilson. 

“Not used to this whole seafaring’ thing yet, huh?” Sam asked with a laugh the second day. 

“No sir,” Steve moaned, his head hanging over the side of the ship where he had just finished spewing up his dinner. “Can’t wait to be off this thing.”

“You the linguist?” Sam asked, coming up to the side of the ship and looking over the water. 

“If my throat isn’t too sore by the time we get there.” 

Sam shook his head. “C’mon, I’m Sam Wilson. Medical doctor for the expedition. And we gotta get you better so you can get us where we need to go.”

“Yeah, about that. I’m not really a navigator, just-“ Steve shrugged, “The only one who can read the maps.”

Sam threw an arm around Steve’s shoulders and tugged him away from the side of the ship. “Just do your best. Now let me see if I’ve got some bread or crackers you can keep down and a little medicine to help with the nausea.”

“You’re a godsend,” Steve managed, letting Sam lead him back inside the steamship.

—⍟-⍟-⍟—

Arriving in Ireland in the late 1940s was a bit different than when Steve had visited in the early 1920s. And back then, he had never stood at a naval base with rows of former Irish military, carrying supplies and weapons, and preparing to take on a mission.

The intercom was announcing “All hands to the launch bay” as Steve looked around. Were all of these people really joining this expedition? How big was the submarine Mr. Stark had gotten for them? 

“Gotten?” a voice laughed, coming up beside Steve, making him realize he’d voiced that thought out loud. “Ooh no. I made this baby all by myself.”

Steve turned and looked at the man who spoke with an American accent and appeared only a handful of years older than Steve was. Immaculately dressed and carrying a briefcase, he certainly didn’t look like an engineer.

“You built the sub?”

“Howard is my father. We wouldn’t trust doing a trip like this to just anyone. I designed it and S.H.I.E.L.D. supplied the manpower. Or, in some places the womanpower. I don’t judge.”

“Steve Rogers,” Steve said, holding his hand out. “Thank you so much, Mr. Stark.”

“Tony.”

“I sure am glad you and your dad believed in me.”

Tony shrugged. “If it doesn’t pan out, I’m already paid and my dad kept the bet so it’s all good.”

“So where’s the ship?” Steve asked, looking out across the water and then back at the buildings behind them.

“We’re standing on it,” Tony announced. “I thought they said you were the smart one.”

“Me?” Steve asked, looking in confusion at the cement grounds beneath his feet. “No, no, I just speak old languages.”

“Yeah, how many?” Tony challenged and Steve took a second counting under his breath. 

“English, Gaelic, French, German, Russian, Spanish, Japanese, Italian, Romanian, Hebrew, Turkish, Arabic, Hindi, Dutch, Xhosa, Swahili, Latin, Greek, Ancient Greek, Sanskrit, Ancient Egyptian, Etruscan, Esperanto, Basque, Yuchi, Haida, Na-Dené, Washo, uh, Aramaic, Amharic, Armenian, uhh.... Icelandic, Swedish, Finnish, Old Norse-“ Steve looked up to see Tony nowhere around him and turned back around. 

Tony had stopped several meters back and Steve looked at him quizzically.

“Sorry. You lost me somewhere around Italian,” Tony remarked. “You mean to tell me you went into a meeting to tell some old guys who can only read English that you had a map to Atlantis and they didn’t believe you? You told them you could read it and everything?”

“Uh, yeah. And then I resigned. How does everyone know about this?”

“Seems to me _they_ should have resigned. Better yet, you should have fired them. Management of a history museum that doesn’t want to discover more history? Sounds to me you’re better off without them and better off with us.”

The men reached a building with a large freight elevator and gathered onto it with the military men as tightly as they could back. Tony looked exceedingly uncomfortable as his expensive looking suit got crunched between green and brown uniforms.

Steve clutched his satchel with the journal and extra pages, files, and all of his research inside.

“So you’re the one who can read the chicken scratch?” a man with short-cropped dark hair and an American accent asked from next to Steve. 

“It’s- it’s not chicken scratch,” Steve found himself replying to the stranger. “It’s an alphabet built on strictly curved and curled letters to insensate the flow of language being like water. And they write their language going from right to left and then left to right every other line so that it flows naturally. It’s actually very beautiful.”

“Yeah, I’m sure,” the stranger replied and Steve couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic or serious.

“Rumlow here’s the commander of this expedition,” Tony introduced as the elevator doors opened and everyone began to pile out. 

“And I see you’ve already met the rich assholes who funded this whole thing,” Rumlow responded immediately. “It’s Commander Rumlow, if you don’t mind. Or just Commander if you somehow forget the rest.”

Steve furrowed his brow a little, but didn’t say anything besides, “No matter what it costs to fund, just know that I’m forever grateful and the world will be forever grateful too. No matter what we spend, it will be nothing in comparison to the value of the knowledge we’ll learn once we find this place.”

Rumlow laughed. “Yes, I do hope this expedition is enriching for all of us.”

—⍟-⍟-⍟— 

The submarine had a strange atmosphere, but Steve tried to tell himself it was only temporary and not much different than his cramped apartment anyway. 

The send off was uneventful, but everyone boarded onto the submarine with plenty of space to spare. Steve marveled at the big laboratories and the observation deck onboard. 

When Steve found his cabin, it was just a hole with two small bunk beds on either side and barely enough room to stand in between them.

Steve jumped and looked up at the ceiling as the intercom began an announcement for dinner and a musical program afterward. Musical program? Steve couldn’t tell if the women speaking was being sarcastic or if the Starks really had thought of everything.

He looked at both bottom bunks in the room and saw that one had an open bag on it so he dropped his own bag beside the other and flopped onto the pressed white sheets of the mattress.

One heavy sigh and Steve was about to close his eyes until dinner when a head, neck, and shoulders shot down from the bunk above him. 

“Ah! You scared the bejesus outta me!” Steve yelped, sitting up so fast he hit his head on the bottom of the top bunk.

“Should’ve paid attention,” the man laughed before dropping to his feet on the floor. “I’m Clint Barton.”

“Geology and excavation,” Steve remembered. 

“You’re -” Clint pulled a pair of tweezers from his pocket. 

“Steve Rogers. I’m, uh-“

“No, no, don’t tell me.” Clint grabbed Steve’s hand and ran the end of one prong of the tweezers underneath his fingernail. Small bits of inevitable dirt came back on the tweezers and just like that, Clint sprang back onto the top bunk with his new bizarre treasure.

Steve stood up again. “What are you-“

Clint had a microscope and a light set up on a small table at the end of his bunk and he was hunched over peering into it. 

“Ink from old parchment. Probably a map of the River Shannon. Lead pencil, number two. Paint flecks. Definitely from an American government building last painted in... 1926. New York City Subway, C Train. White cat... mostly hypoallergenic.”

Steve had no idea how Clint was determining that information, but he was mildly scared of anyone with the powers to Sherlock Holmes some dirt from beneath his fingernails so he started backing out of the room slowly when Clint must have figured it out because he jerked his head up and turned to look at Steve and nearly shouted, “Linguist!”

Steve jumped either at the sound or the fact that he backed into someone at the same time.

“Hey, calm down there, Steve,” a familiar voice laughed and Steve turned to see Sam coming into the room. Steve turned to Sam with wide eyes and Sam only laughed. “You let him analyze your fingernail dirt, didn’t you?”

“Forced compliance.”

“He knows everything there is to know about you now.” Sam went over to his bag and started pulling things out. “Doesn’t matter. You’re my 3:00 today. How’ve you been feeling?”

It had been five days since Sam had caught Steve throwing up over the side of the ocean-liner.

“Better than I was,” Steve started, but Sam turned around with a thermometer and placed it into his mouth before Steve could get another word in.

“You been doing okay since the original seasickness? Did that subside?”

Steve kind of shrugged. “Mostly,” he said around the thermometer.

“Food's been staying down, yeah.” Sam agreed without being told. “What about anything else? Headaches? Upset stomach? Sore throat?”

“What?”

Sam pulled the thermometer from Steve’s mouth and checked it.

“I’m required to ask questions, Steve. It’s my job. Now be honest.” He dropped the thermometer in a pan to be sterilized and grabbed for the next thing. 

“Mostly just the feeling of overwhelming-“ Steve’s eyes went wide. “What is that?!”

“Big man like you scared of a needle?” Sam laughed. “It’s a tetanus shot. Your paperwork says you’re overdue.”

“Overdue and you live with a cat?” Clint called in a horrified voice from the top of the bunk.

“You play in dirt!” Sam returned without even looking in Clint’s direction. 

“Speaking of, where is my cat?” Steve asked, more to himself than his new roommates. “They were supposed to be getting him to me.”

“Heading into the unknown and you have a cat?” Sam asked with a raised eyebrow as he tapped the syringe he’d filled. “You’re definitely gonna need this.”

—⍟-⍟-⍟— 

When Rumlow paged Steve over the intercom to come to the bridge, Steve’s face visibly fell. 

Sam snickered. “I see you’ve already met the commander.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Steve muttered, waving Sam off, grabbing his satchel, and flexing the arm that had just been injected as he walked toward the helm. 

He spotted Tony almost as soon as he got there, but he wasn’t expecting a whole group of faces he recognized to be assembled.

“Please take this,” Natasha said, shoving an animal carrier his way almost the second he walked in. 

“Alpine!” Steve gasped, looking at the white feline he hadn’t seen in a week now. “How’ve you been, buddy?” He set down the carrier and opened the little door. 

Steve was sure Alpine’s purring could be heard all the way to Atlantis. The cat was so loud and headbutting Steve all over, meowing and rubbing his body back and forth for Steve to scratch. Steve obliged willingly.

“They've been feeding you well?” he asked softly. “I don’t know what they’ve been feeding you, but I hope you’ve been keeping it down. Were you okay on the ship? Because myself, I got pretty seasick.”

“Ahem,” a voice cleared. “Any time you would like to join us, Rogers.”

Steve looked up to see Rumlow and the team all watching him.

“This is our leader?” a muscular, blond man asked and Steve stood up with Alpine in his arms. His eyes widened as he noticed the height and muscles on the other man and made a mental note to keep on his good side.

“Steve Rogers,” he said, holding out the hand that wasn’t holding Alpine.

“Thor Odinson, demolitions. I like your cat.” He immediately reached over Steve’s outstretched hand to pet Alpine.The cat kept purring.

“Thank you. And, uh, thanks for joining this expedition.”

“We’re we allowed to bring animals? Because nobody told me and that would have been really cool,” came a young voice from beside Thor. “I mean, I don’t have one right now, but if I’d known, I might have gotten one, you know?”

“Peter Parker,” Steve acknowledged as he turned to see where the voice was coming from. 

Peter stood up tall and attentive.

“Yes, Sir,” he nodded. “I’m your engineer.”

“We’re gonna really need you,” Steve told him and then turned to look at the others standing around. They were all looking at him as if they expected some kind of speech or direction, but Steve hadn’t forgotten the last time he had stood in front of a crowd and how well that had gone. He swallowed and tried to tamp down his nerves. “I think I’m here to tell you more about a threat we may face. There’s an area we’re passing through where a lot of ships over the years have gone missing. We don’t know what we’re getting into, but we know it could be dangerous.”

Steve placed Alpine around his neck like an untied scarf and caused the crew to exchange a few glances, but he didn’t notice as he dug around to find the right information in his satchel. He pulled out a battered notebook and flipped to a bookmarked section before reading, ‘So the book of Job in the Bible says that it’s a gliding sea serpent which Job called a ‘Monster of the Sea’ and said it had double-plated armor plates on its back and it breathed fire.”

“I think I saw him in a Chinese parade one time,” Tony chimed and Steve gave him a withering long look. 

“I doubt it really breathed fire. It was probably a sculpture or a ship with a canon or something and the writer of Job was just being poetic.” Steve looked up, realizing he’d found his confidence somewhere along the way.”That doesn’t mean we won’t encounter something that could be dangerous out there. This still is a mission into uncharted waters and unknown territory.”

“Hey, Commie,” Tony chimed in, turning and looking at Rumlow. “This doesn’t look like a good area. Looks like all our predecessors ended up ...pretty deceased. Think we should probably chart a new course.”

Steve and his new team all perked up at once. 

“I’ll call those shots, Stark,” Rumlow replied. “And it’s Commander.”

“I said what I said,” Tony mumbled under his breath as the wreckage from old ships began to come into view from the windows of the observatory.

“These ships are from every century,” Steve marveled as he peered out of the windows around them at the shipwrecks they had just traveled into the midsts of. “There must be something about this area.”

He turned to look at Rumlow, ready to throw his full support behind Tony’s decision to try another passage, when suddenly there was a loud pounding noise and everyone was knocked off their feet and into rails and equipment around them. Alpine clawed at Steve’s shoulders as both he and the cat hit the ground. 

“What the hell was that?” Rumlow roared as he pushed his body upright from where he’d caught himself on the nearby railing. “Stark, if you’ve driven into-“

“There’s something out there!” Peter yelled, pointing a finger through the glass of the observatory. Everyone’s attention turned to see where Peter was pointing just in time to see a giant tail give a powerful flick, making the water swirl roughly all around them. Tony held onto the helm, trying to keep the vessel from rolling with the force.

“What was that?” Natasha yelled as some of the marines rushed to get a glimpse of the enormous creature.

Then suddenly it hit again. The whole side of the submarine dented in as the creature bashed against it. Screams came from every direction. No one stayed standing. Workers slid across floors. Equipment toppled. The vessel began to nosedive. Alpine scrambled up onto slick filing cabinets only to lose his balance again as another blow hammered the submarine.

Steve did everything he could just to hold onto his satchel. If the map got damaged, this whole expedition would be over.

Then suddenly the groaning of the bending of metal beams could be heard from deep within the submarine.

“We’re not gonna make it out of here,” Clint said in a strained voice, but Natasha gritted her teeth and turned toward where Rumlow had previously been standing. He was several feet away on the slanted ground now.

“Commander, we have to surface!” she yelled. “We have to get out of here!”

Rumlow seemed too dazed to answer, but Tony pulled himself to his feet.

“I’m taking us to the surface!” he called out, but he didn’t have time to even give his crew the order before the creature hit again. 

The water too dark and the creature too far from the observation deck, all they could do was hear it surrounding them. Far from the deck, it clanged against the far end of the submarine and then bashed it again until the whole end up the ship upended. Everyone began slipping and sliding and falling. Equipment and bodies slammed into one another until the creature was within view again.

Another powerful blow, but this time to the glass of the entire room around them. There was a loud popping noise and then they all saw it. A crack right in the center of the wall where the creature’s angry head had rammed.

“Surface! Surface! Surface!” Rumlow was screaming as everyone able to get to their feet scrambled to get the submarine out of the depths, but it was too late.

Steve grabbed onto Alpine, holding him far tighter than he ever had before as he looked around for where his cat carrier had ended up. 

And then it happened. The crack started to spew water in, the pressure increasing by the second. Beams supporting the ship couldn’t withstand the change in pressure and began to buckle. Everything felt like it happened in slow motion and their bodies were in molasses, unable to move fast enough to get away. 

“Life pods! Get out!” Steve screamed. 

“Life pods!” Tony echoed. 

“To the life pods!” Thor bellowed and every volunteer and expert struggled across slanted floors as water began to pour in over them, making everything slippery.

“We’ve got just minutes to get out of here!” Clint said, grabbing onto the back of Natasha’s shirt and steering her toward the steps. 

The steps had to be hopped down. They were facing the wrong direction to be climbed. And when people jumped, they landed in knee deep water.

“Move! Move! Move!” Steve ordered as if he had suddenly become everyone’s drill sergeant. Thor grabbed Steve around the back of his neck and practically threw the cat carrier at him. Steve didn’t even know how he managed to get Alpine in it and close the door again without dropping the journal or the animal. 

Steve made it to the life pods by following Natasha who seemed to know exactly where she was going.

“To the life pods! Abandon ship!” a woman’s voice was yelling over the intercom. People came pouring into the dispatch bays where the smaller submarine pods were located and suddenly the small submarine pods were taking off left and right. 

“There’s not enough pods,” Peter said suddenly as he looked around the room. “We won’t all fit.” 

“Then you better get on one, kid!” Tony said, snatching Peter by the arm and practically shoving him into the first pod they could reach. Dozens of others tried to climb on board, but standing packed into the vessel, only four fit. Tony held onto Peter until the door sealed and he jettisoned them away from the sinking submarine as fast as they could go. 

“Leave that!” Rumlow shouted at Steve as he nodded toward the pet carrier and grabbed at Steve’s shirt.

“That’s my cat!” Steve screamed in the feline’s defense.

“There’s no room!”

“There’s room!” Thor said defiantly as he pushed into the pod and grabbed the wet pet carrier. He set it up on his shoulder so it was too high for Commander Rumlow to complain and then he grabbed at Natasha before Rumlow could close the doors.

The door was halfway closed when a man in military greens tried to duck into it to shove himself impossibly close to the others.

A shot rang out. It took Steve a second to even realize what had happened, but then he saw Rumlow’s hand sticking out from between Thor and Natasha. It was holding a pistol and the glass door to the pod closed as the man fell outside and started bleeding out onto the platform. 

Rumlow turned and began to start up the pod. Steve wanted to scream, to bash the commander over his head for such a violent act, but he was too stunned to do anything but stare. 

Thor, it seemed, was in the same state as he watched outside the pod’s glass door. Another shot rang out from a man Steve recognized as Rumlow’s assistant as he boarded a pod all to himself and sealed the door.

The pods were filling and disappearing so quickly. Steve watched as a last pod door opened and someone shoved Sam forward into it. He grasped at his doctor’s bag. 

“Wait! Wait!” a strong-looking, blonde woman started pushing people aside with one arm as she hauled a smaller girl forward.

The smaller girl had a huge box in her arms and a heavy looking backpack. Everyone around them was clamoring and trying to shove her back until Clint came bustling through. He was pushing people aside and shoving the small girl forward as well until Sam could grab her and pull her into the pod. She dropped her box onto the floor and collapsed on top of it. 

Sam’s arm grabbed at the blonde woman who had helped the young girl, but she shook him off, shoving Clint into the pod instead. And then the young girl was back on her feet, grasping at the blonde woman with everything she had in her.

It was the last thing Steve saw before his own life pod was sealed off and propelled into the dark water. 

—⍟-⍟-⍟— 

No one in the pod said a word as they all stood pressed against one another. There weren’t words. There hadn’t been enough life pods to save everyone. They knew they had condemned those left behind to death.

Steve tried not to imagine what death by drowning in freezing, pitch black Atlantic water would be like.

“We’ll surface and reconnect with the others. You’ll navigate us back,” Rumlow told Steve. His voice sounded unwavering and determined despite the situation.

“I’m not really a navigator,” Steve said quickly. 

Alpine made a helpless meowing sound and Steve looked up to the carrier on Thor’s shoulder. He smiled pitifully at the idea that somehow this white, helpless feline had survived everything.

Then somewhere in the distance, a groaning wail was heard.

He had forgotten. Somehow, in all of the chaos, Steve had forgotten the massive animal- the Leviathan- that had caused the submarine’s failure in the first place.

None of them were going to survive. There had been a dozen life pods that escaped the sinking vessel and the moment of relief was over the instant they heard the monster’s groan.

It was too dark to make out well, but it was obvious the animal was swishing rapidly through the water, sending the small pods hurling through the created currents in different directions. Thor found a light and it seemed other pod vessels found theirs too, as suddenly numerous lights flickered in the dark water, all searching for the creature.

Steve didn’t realize what had happened at first when he saw one of the pods start sinking until Natasha said, “They’re damaged. Taking on water. They’re not gonna make it.”

There weren’t any gasps or screams or even comments as they watched the pod sink lower and lower until the lights on it could no longer be seen. 

Rumlow just turned toward the controls and started to navigate their pod further away from the submarine wreckage.

Thor sighed heavily and glanced up at the cat carrier on his shoulder. Steve did too and then he set the satchel of information down between his feet and reached for the carrier to hold it himself. 

“Thank you,” he said quietly and Thor only gave him an understanding look.

“Your cat’s more important than what I brought,” Thor replied. “My own bag is filled with dynamite, TNT, matches, and grenades.”

Natasha laughed a little under her breath.

“What did you bring?” Thor asked, looking down at the top of her red head.

“None of anyone’s business.”

Rumlow opened his mouth to add his comment to the mix when suddenly, the pod closest to theirs went flying sideways across their window, smashing against rocks, and sinking quickly. 

“It’s back!” Steve yelled.

“Get us out of here!” Thor yelled and Rumlow began smashing buttons quickly, trying to find one that sped up their escape pod. They watched in horror as another pod was attacked and they heard the Leviathan’s sharp teeth grind into metal. Then it too joined the others. 

Then all at once the creature spun around and loomed in front of them, long, white teeth shining and sharp in the light of their pod.

Steve was fairly sure one gnash of the thing’s jaws could damage the pod they were in, much the same or worse than the ones they’d watched sink. 

“It’s not even trying to eat us. It’s just protecting its territory,” Natasha said calmly. 

Thor watched the creature size them up. “Don’t move. Let it know you aren’t a threat.”

“How could we possibly be a threat?” Steve asked through clenched teeth. “That thing is huge.”

Everyone stood frozen, having a staring contest with this god of life and death. Then another escape pod started to move in their periphery. 

The creature turned in a flash- teeth gnashing and tail flapping with enough force that the pod Steve and the others were in was propelled through the water at a velocity they were sure the vessel was not equipped to travel. 

Unfortunately, the motion had also caught the attention of the creature again and it spun around, targeting them once more, knocking another pod with its tail as it swam.

“Get us out! Get us out!” Rumlow yelled at the controls. He started mashing buttons faster than Steve could read them then all at once the pod lunged forward.

The four person crew would have hit the floor like they had on the large submarine, but there wasn’t room. They all slammed against the glass and one another, but Rumlow’s hands never left the controls.

“Don’t smash us into anything,” Natasha instructed, but Rumlow ignored her. The pod was sending out a radar circle and Rumlow’s eyes constantly flicked between the screen and the controls, trying to navigate. but all the screen could tell them was that if they went any deeper, they were going to crash into dozens of old shipwrecks, underwater reefs, and jagged rocks that littered their path. They were surrounded by earth and debris and-

“An opening!” Thor bellowed and pointed to the screen. 

“Left, Commander!” Steve added. “There’s a way out!”

Rumlow sped left full throttle as the creature chased after them. Steve closed his eyes to keep from looking out at it. The sharp white teeth were glaring back in the minimum light. 

“We’re smaller. We should be faster,” Natasha reasoned quickly. “We can tire him out. Keep cutting sharp turns.”

Rumlow yanked the joystick to the side and the pod blasted off again. Everyone held onto something except Alpine who was mewing a loud and terrified noise from his enclosure.

The creature’s turn was fast, but they had gained a little distance.

“Do it again!” Thor demanded and Rumlow complied.

Again, the creature jerked its body around quickly, but it lost a few meters each time.

“It’s working!” Steve looked at the thing for only as long as he had to. “Go! Go! Go!”

“I’m going!”

They doubled back toward the area they had come forcing the giant monster to chase after them.

Rumlow zig-zagged through the water, taking the angry creature through reefs and rocks and back toward the wrecked submarine, gaining a little distance at each sharp turn. 

They never saw it coming. A blast exploded behind them and the creature stopped gnashing its jaws, instead making a loud wailing noise. The force of the explosion was so strong, it rocked all of the escape pods, sending them all back from the center of the blast.

Everyone watched from their pod windows. The light from the blast burned through the creature, causing onlookers to finally see how large the monster really was. And then it groaned and began to sink. 

No one said a word as the creature fell into the murky depths, no one quite able to believe it.

“They saved us,” Steve said at last. “That blast came from the sub.”

Thor closed his eyes in understanding. “They used their last moments to save us. I had crates of explosives left on the ship.”

“They used their dwindling air supply to find and detonate it when the monster got close? Even knowing it wouldn’t help them?” Natasha replied. “Pretty heroic.”

“They saved us,” Steve repeated. “We have to make this voyage count now. For them and their legacy.”

Rumlow nodded and flashed their pod’s lights to signal to the other survivors. “Alright then,” he asked, looking back at the monitor, “Where was that opening?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ♥ you guys!


	3. Chapter 3

The small pods were running low on air supply by the time they reached an area where they could surface. They had gone through a small channel between two large mountainous rocks under the water for nearly two hours. The whole time, Steve kept eternally questioning if the mountains could be volcanic. 

The place that they surfaced was surrounded by tall mountains and probably looked like small uninhabited islands to anyone flying overhead, but no one had time to think about it.

Rumlow led the other escape pods to the surface and they each climbed out and onto the rocky shoreline. It was only a small strip of barren land, surrounded on all sides by tall, dark rocks that curled over their view of the sky. The air was thick and salty and hard to breathe. Nothing lived there. Nothing _could_ live there.

“We need to find a way to send a signal,” Tony said as Steve helped him out of his pod. “We can’t stay here. We have no food, no supplies, and not enough fuel in the pods to get us anywhere.”

“Why weren’t there enough escape pods for everyone?” Thor asked him immediately and with an accusatory tone underlying his words. 

“Escape pods?” Tony laughed. “Those pods were for deep water exploration. We weren’t meant to have to _escape_ a damn thing.”

“Well, I’ve explored every bit of this that I ever want to,” Natasha said with a flourish of her hand to the area around them. “What’s the plan?”

“We’re working on one,” Steve replied as he went to help the next people out of a pod.

—⍟-⍟-⍟— 

Only thirteen people survived in the end. Thirteen people and they still didn’t have enough supplies to sustain them more than a few days.

“I can’t believe you brought food,” Steve laughed as he looked at the young girl going through her box and bag of supplies. “You’re the smartest one of all of us. I brought ancient papers and my cat. They won’t exactly help us survive anything.”

“Relax, Rogers. We can always eat your cat,” Rumlow laughed, and Steve tugged Alpine’s carrier closer to him with a scowl. 

“What’s your name?” Steve asked the young woman. 

“Wanda Maximoff.”

“Wanda Maximoff, you’re the real hero of this journey, and if we ever get out of here, I’m gonna make sure they remember that.”

Wanda just turned away shyly, but Steve wrote her name down in his own journal.

“These rocks are the most bizarre volcanic structures I’ve ever seen!” Clint said to no one in particular as he held a magnifying glass up to a chip he had taken from one of them.

“Definitely volcanic, but they formed thousands of years ago and the stone isn’t eroded by the water at all, at least not as far as I can tell.”

Steve’s expertise wasn’t in volcanic rock, so he settled on working on what he could handle.

“Can everyone here kindly give me their name and expertise?” Steve flicked out his pencil and flipped to a clear page in his journal.

“Thor Odinson, formerly demolitions. Now, seemingly, small detonations and maybe a firecracker or two,” Thor replied, trying to keep things light. “I have a few explosives and some matches.”

Steve nodded gratefully as Clint spoke up. “Geology, remember? Clint Barton.”

“How could we forget?” Natasha answered sarcastically before looking at Steve. “Natasha Romanova.”

“And, uh, area of expertise?”

“You tell me,” she replied coyly before turning and walking toward Clint. Steve settled on drawing a tiny knife and skull next to her name in the journal.

“Tony Stark,” Tony piped up proudly, but then deflated. “Designer of that multi-million dollar submarine we just lost. And an utter idiot.”

“And designer of the pods that saved us,” Steve scoffed. 

“James Rhodes,” a man Steve didn’t recognize said. “You can call me Rhodey. Colonel for the US Navy. On this mission, I work with Tony.”

“Thank you, Colonel,” Steve replied, instinctively standing a little straighter. “You’re Peter?” Steve asked the kid closest to him.

“Yes. Parker, Sir,” he added with a nod. “I’m here to engineer.”

“And we’re glad to have you.”

“Speak up,” a blonde woman Steve didn’t recognize said to Wanda. 

“Wanda Maximoff,” Steve answered for her with a smile. “I wrote your name first. You brought the food. Any areas of expertise?”

“I can cook it?” she offered shyly.

“Even better.”

Steve knew he wasn’t really as perky as he was acting, but if someone didn’t keep up the morale, they were all going to panic and give up before it was necessary.

“Sam Wilson,” Sam replied easily as he passed Steve to go inspect more of their little hidden beach. “Doctor.”

“Thanks, Sam.”

The blonde woman exchanged a few more words with Wanda and then cleared her throat. “Carol Danvers. US Navy captain. I’m afraid beyond another helping hand and being decent with repairs, I don’t have an area of expertise here. My post was the switchboard and intercoms and my expertise was for the ship.”

“That’s okay. We’ll take all the help we can get Ms. Danvers,” Steve told her before catching himself. “Captain!”

Carol smirked. 

“The Commander’s name is Brock,” she said, stepping closer to Steve. “He probably wouldn’t tell you that.”

“He probably wouldn’t tell you he’s not fit for this mission,” Rhodey added almost under his breath, and Carol sent him a smirk of agreement.

“Watch your mouth,” came a sharp voice to Rhodey and Steve recognized the man who had taken a pod all to himself when others had been clamoring to get onboard. He bristled just to see the man. 

“Your name, Sir?” he asked. 

“Jack Rollins,” he answered, cocking a gun and pointing it at Steve. “I’m here for security.”

Steve raised his hands still holding the journal and the pencil. “Whoa, whoa. We’re all on the same team here.”

The man scoffed and went back to eyeing Carol and Rhodey threateningly. Luckily, neither seemed particularly bothered.

“Excuse me, Sir?” Steve asked, looking toward the back of the group. “You are?”

“Wondering what I’m doing here?” the man answered and adjusted his glasses.

“That’s Dr. Bruce Banner, the finest scientist this world has ever seen and I’m including myself when I say that,” Tony said in a rare moment of humility.

“Your grandfather’s work was an inspiration,” Dr. Banner spoke up. “Atlantis isn’t the type of thing I usually study-“

“He’s a biochemist,” Tony chimed in. 

“But finding it has been a dream of mine my whole life. There’s a theory that what we will find won’t just be sculptures and the remains of the city, but live, thriving flora, maybe even fauna because of some sort of air pocket created when the island descended beneath the volcano. Now these plants live in an undetected underwater, uh, kind of dome.”

“I’ve read the theories,” Steve said, pleasantly surprising the doctor. “Part of me thinks it’s all just a really nice theory. Part of me would love to believe it.”

“I don’t know that I’ll be much good to you,” Dr. Banner admitted “But I’m here for you whatever you need.”

“You mean whatever I need?” a voice cracked behind Steve and he turned to level a look at Rumlow.

“I’ve got you. Brock Rumlow,” Steve started, but was cut off. 

“Commander. And my expertise is in keeping track of a whole team of idiots. Though I don’t think that will be too hard since you’ve all managed to get us stranded on a spit of underwater shoreline that even God can’t find.”

“Actually,” Rhodey interrupted. “We have the coordinates. We kept track while in the exploration pod.”

Steve tucked his pencil behind his ear and pushed up his glasses before beginning to flip through his grandfather’s journal. 

“Here’s where we need to be. How far off are we?”

“Uh, Rogers?” came a call from across the area. Tony shone a flashlight in that direction and saw Clint halfway up one of the steep rocks, blinking down at them.

“Yeah?”

Clint waved them over. “There’s a staircase here you might wanna check out.”

—⍟-⍟-⍟— 

The staircase was harder to get to than Clint’s initial seemingly effortless climb had led them to believe, but Steve and Sam had looked at one another’s expressions, then practically raced to get there. Peter followed them and Dr. Banner followed him.

“You’re sure it’s a staircase?” Steve called out to Clint while he was climbing.

“Positive. It’s ornate.”

“An ornate staircase!” Steve laughed incredulously. “I can’t believe this.”

“Do you realize what this means, Steve?” Sam asked. “This staircase is _real._ So even if we find nothing else, this proves you were right.”

“My grandfather was right,” Steve interjected excitedly. “He wasn’t crazy after all.”

Steve reached the flat rocky area where Clint was waiting and realized why it was flat to begin with. It was solid and marbled and smoothed over with tools rather than nature and time. 

“Shine your light up there!” Steve told Peter as he reached the platform, and Peter lit up the archway over the staircase.

Steve sucked in a breath. Above the archway were chiseled markings; words identical to the ones in the journal left by Steve’s grandfather.

“We found it,” he whispered. 

“Where do you think the stairwell leads, Mr. Navigator?” Dr. Banner asked as he pulled himself up onto the platform. 

“I don’t know how to pronounce it, but the writing says, _‘While the sea lasts, so shall Atlantis.’”_

“So much for that,” Clint mumbled. “The sea’s what killed ‘em.”

Steve gave him a disappointed look, but said nothing.

“So are we gonna follow it and see what else we find?” Peter asked eagerly. 

“Oh yeah.” Steve waited for Peter to shine his flashlight into the descending stairwell before starting to walk down.  
At first, the stairwell was narrow, but it seemed to widen as they descended and the steps themselves became more elongated and solid. Their flashlights couldn’t find an end, but it was obvious the steps went on for a considerable distance. 

“Anyone else surprised these steps are so dry?” Peter asked. “I feel like taking steps that we know are way below sea level should just get us back into more water.”

“Man, I’ve seen enough water to last me a lifetime,” Clint groused in response. 

Steve and Dr. Banner didn’t say anything. They were too busy taking in the ancient, unique designs of the stairs as they traveled deeper and deeper. 

“We should go back,” Steve said after ten minutes or so. “If we’re going to go down this far, we should bring the whole team. Never know what we could need them for.”

“Did anyone else bring a flashlight?” Peter asked as he neared the mouth of the staircase again. “What if mine gives out?”

“I’ve got one in my bag back at camp,” Steve answered the same time Clint and Dr. Banner both said, “I did.”

“Four lights? That’s amazing,” Peter said as they walked out of the stairwell again to join the others.

“Could have brought five, but some asshole brought his cat.”

Rumlow stood at the bottom of the rocks and turned toward Steve as he climbed down back onto the rocky shore. Steve sent him a long suffering expression.

“We’re going to need the whole team in there,” he announced, pointing up the short distance of the rockface. “There’s a cave up there that leads down into a long stairwell. I think we should explore it together.”

Thor looked at where Steve had entrusted him with Alpine and shrugged, but then another voice rang out. 

“Some of us are gonna stay here and work on the pods.”

Steve saw Tony and Rhodey bent over the control panel of one of the pods with a few tools in hand and he nodded. 

“Good idea,” Steve agreed. “If you came for finding and studying Atlantis, come with me. If your op is getting us home, by all means, stay here.”

“I guess we’re going with your dad, kitty,” Thor told the cat as he picked up the carrier and his own bag. 

“You may need this,” Steve said, holding his own notebook out to Tony. “To make calculations or something.” He handed one of his pencils to Tony as well. “Just don’t mark over anything I’ve written?”

“Thanks, Rogers,” Tony said, taking the items. “I hope you find what you came out here for.”

“I hope you find a way to get us home afterward,” Steve told both men before turning away.

Everyone grabbed their things, Clint and Carol offering to help Wanda with all of her canned goods even after she left some behind for Tony and Rhodey. 

“It’s amazing you managed to bring this much food with you with such a short notice,” Clint said with a grunt as he hoisted a box into his arms. 

“Carol helped.” Wanda looked almost guilty as she began to follow the others toward the rocks leading to the stairs. “You should have left me behind,” she said with a look to Carol. “I’m the only person left from my family. My parents have both passed and my brother died last year. No one would have missed me.”

Carol didn’t look at Wanda as she picked up a crate of canned goods. “Worth isn’t measured that way,” she answered before walking ahead.

“You and Peter were the youngest on the ship,” Clint added. “You have the most to live for.”

“I don’t know what I’m here for,” she replied quietly, but Clint didn’t seem to hear as he walked off after Carol. 

Wanda shouldered the remaining bag of food and met the others at the foot of the rocks. 

“This is a team of specialists,” Rumlow said to them before they climbed. “But we started this mission with over three hundred soldiers and scientists. And what you see around you are all that’s left.”

Bruce shifted almost uneasily, but Sam put a hand on his shoulder.

“Everyone does every job,” Rumlow instructed, while the team members all looked around at their teammates. “Everyone helps everyone else. At this point, it’s all about survival. If we don’t help one another, we’ll end up turning on one another. We’re trying to find what we came here for, sure, but the main goal now is to stay alive and hope a rescue comes for us.”

Sam swallowed uneasily and Thor opened his mouth like he wanted to say something, but neither said a word.

“Does everyone have their supplies?” Natasha asked as she walked toward where they were to start the climb.

“How are we getting supplies up those rocks?” Clint asked. 

“Teamwork,” Steve said with a smile and helped by taking the food crate Clint was holding.

Peter hurried and climbed ahead, followed by Thor and Carol, each taking boxes and bags of equipment and supplies and passing them along to get up to the opening of the cave.

Steve stood back a second and watched them work, knowing they were headed toward the stairwell that was proof this trip hadn’t been wholly in vain. Atlantis had been there. Atlantis had been right where they were standing.


	4. Chapter 4

4  
(2,092)

“You lead us this far for a puddle of water. Good going, Rogers. You’re a real genius,” Rumlow sneered as the whole team stood around with disappointed faces while staring at the dark water they had found pooled at the bottom of the stairwell.

“I did my best, all right?” Steve answered defensively. But he felt defeated. Everything remaining of Atlantis was right there beneath them, and it was unreachable unless Tony and Rhodey found a way to get those pods working again.

“If nothing else, I say you did a damn good job,” Sam said, putting a firm hand on Steve’s shoulder encouragingly. “You couldn’t have predicted that monster. And getting us this far is still more than anyone who has ever searched has ever found. We’ve made history thanks to you.”

“Thanks to him, we’re out here to begin with,” Rumlow snapped. “And we’re gonna die out here unless-“

“Give it a rest, will you?” Clint snapped, and Rumlow turned around angrily until he saw Natasha standing there ready to defend the geologist.

Steve did his best to ignore all of them and focus on his surroundings. Alpine was in his carrier, but Steve considered letting him out. There was only so far he could truly go. But another part of him said Rumlow could see it as an opportunity to take out his frustration on an animal. Steve didn’t want to think Rumlow would really do such a thing, but he also didn’t want to take chances until he was sure or he had no other choice.

“This rock,” Clint said and all flashlights swept over to where he was standing with a small piece in his hand. He looked at it and then licked it. “It’s volcanic. And very old. Like BC old. I’ve never studied anything this old not already in a museum, and certainly not weathered by the ocean. The old stories could have a lot of truth to them.”

“That makes sense,” Wanda relied. “This place was all formed by a volcano, right? Isn’t that what wiped out Atlantis?”

“You don’t even know?” Rumlow laughed sarcastically. “Who signed off for you to come on this mission?”

“She’s the cook. She brought food,” Carol responded tersely. 

“I hope she starves him,” Sam whispered to Steve who did his best not to laugh, lest someone questioned him.

—⍟-⍟-⍟— 

They wanted to climb back to the top of the stairwell and make a camp along the safety of the shore. The oxygen would be better there, but it seemed counterproductive. Everyone agreed they could go without food for the evening since they had eaten earlier in the day, so they situated themselves far enough back from the water that they hoped they wouldn’t get wet. 

“Should someone stay up and keep watch?” Sam questioned Rumlow, hoping the commander could convince someone, but he just laughed. 

“I don’t know what I would be watching out for. Quicksand? Land Sharks?”

“That monster’s family to hunt us down and retaliate,” Natasha muttered.

“I’ll stay up.”

Eyes darted toward Steve. 

“I’ll stay up while you guys sleep,” he clarified. “To make sure everything’s safe.”

“I’ll take the second shift,” Thor added before Sam continued. 

“Wake me up after your turn.”

“We don’t have much in the way of blankets and pillows,” Clint said somewhat resignedly. “Guess we’re sleeping with arms under our heads tonight.”

Jack stamped his foot on a step to make a point. “We don’t have blankets and pillows and the _linguist_ wants us to sleep on marble stairs.”

“We have our lives. Ever heard of being grateful?” Carol snapped at the surly man, but Jack just rolled his eyes. 

“I’ll be grateful when someone rescues us or Stark and Rhodes get those pods going again.”

“Arguing will get us nowhere,” Clint said with his hands raised in a quieting motion. 

Thor agreed. “We have to do what we can to look out for one another right now. Now Steve has agreed to take the first shift. The rest of us should try to get some sleep.”

Carol and Steve both sent Clint and Thor grateful looks as the group arranged themselves on one of the landings a little ways up the stairs from the dark water.

“C’mon,” Steve whispered quietly to Alpine. “Looks like it’s just you and me for a while, buddy.”

He waited till the group seemed settled and asleep before he opened the door and let Alpine out of his carrier.

Steve turned on a flashlight and flipped open the journal he had been reading nonstop since Mr. Stark had given it to him. For the first time, it crossed his mind how easily it could have been lost to the bottom of the ocean.

Alpine scratched his chin on the corner of the journal.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen from here, Al. This wasn’t ever a part of the plan,” Steve admitted a bit morosely. 

Alpine sniffed and stretched and walked around the group. He smelled at a few people’s hands and hair and feet, but nothing interested him more than the edge of the water surrounding the bottom of the steps.

“You be careful down there,” Steve said before thinking twice. “Shit. Don’t drink it,” he muttered. He stood up to go scoop up the cat when suddenly the center of the water started to glow a greenish-blue.

Steve glanced around noting the carved walls around him were reflecting the glowing aqua tint of the water, and suddenly he could hear a noise coming from beneath the surface.

“Alpine!” he yelled, knowing yelling had never gotten a cat to come to anyone, but definitely not wanting to race to the water’s edge either. 

The water started to ripple and Steve turned to the group. Some of them were rousing at the noise. 

“Get up! Get up! Get up!” he yelled, racing up the steps again. Steve started shaking people awake as the sound got louder. A droning hum filled the small chamber of the stairwell. It echoed off the walls and the vibrations could be felt under their feet. 

“What is that?!” someone yelled and almost everyone was frozen staring at the water.

“Let’s go! Go!” Rumlow yelled suddenly and people dropped bags and boxes in a mad effort to scramble up the stairs. 

Steve looked back at Alpine. The cat seemed mesmerized by the water. It wasn’t dark at all anymore, but a glowing blue-green emanating from the center outward. And Alpine wasn’t drinking it, just staring as if in a trance.

“Alpine!” Steve’s voice pitched higher than usual. “Kitty, Kitty, Kitty!”

The blue-green of the water got brighter and Steve raced down toward the cat. The vibrations were so strong near the surface of the water that when Steve went to scoop up the feline, he lost his footing and went tumbling with Alpine in hand into the freezing seawater. 

“Steve!” he heard someone yell, but he wanted them to run. Alpine made a terrorized noise and in Steve’s mad scramble, he lost his purchase on the animal and both went sinking beneath the luminescent surface. 

Steve’s lungs filled with icy-cold saltwater. His body tried to seize up in response, but he pushed through it, coming to the surface to hack and spit up what saltwater he could. His voice sounded raw and strained in his own ears as he reached for the stairs again. The team had assumed the stairs descended deeper into the water. Steve was realizing they cut off rather abruptly so he couldn’t stand and he couldn’t reach anything he could grip. Everything he could reach was slick marble.

“Alpine?” he gasped, looking around, but he couldn’t see where the cat had gone. 

“Steve!” came the voice again, and Steve managed to see Sam trying to reach for him. Sam was too far away. How did Steve get so far out? He could see everything around them now. The glow of the water lit everything in the stairwell and Alpine was nowhere to be seen. 

“Alpine,” he tried again, attempting to get Sam’s help, but his voice was weak. “Cat.”

Sam glanced around, but kept his arm extended for Steve. 

“C’mon, man!” he yelled and Steve was trying. Steve was kicking his legs the best he could to stay afloat, but he couldn’t seem to move them fast enough to reach the edge of the stairs again. He didn’t see Alpine anywhere. 

His chest hurt. His brain couldn’t think. His muscles were becoming more and more constricted. His vision was blurry from the saltwater in his eyes. He somehow swallowed a gulp of saltwater.

Then in a flash something burst from the water. 

Everyone screamed. In the first second, Steve was convinced it was another creature like the one from before, was convinced he was going to die.

But the next moment, his brain focused. 

It was a man. 

A human man that none of them had seen before was now on the edge of the steps that led down into the water. And he was holding a soaked Alpine. 

Steve just squeaked and pointed as if Sam didn’t already see the man who had appeared from the water.

Suddenly more people surrounded Steve in the water, and the current of their bodies pushed Steve close enough to the steps for Sam to grip his hand and help him latch onto the slick steps. He couldn’t seem to pull him out without almost falling in himself, but at least Steve could hold himself above water better now.

Steve looked over at the man who was running his hands up and down Alpine’s wet, white fur and then breathing into the cat’s little mouth.

Steve was so focused on him, he didn’t even notice when Thor and Peter arrived until they were pulling him from the water and up onto the steps. 

Steve sat on the steps staring at this new group of strangers around him. The team of explorers stared at the new sea-strangers and the sea-strangers stared back. The man holding Alpine was lean, but muscular with dark brown hair and sharp blue eyes. He was mesmerizing. 

Alpine picked up his little waterlogged head and shook it weakly before sneezing a handful of times in succession. Both groups stared at the cat. The man held the animal up and looked at it perplexedly before speaking to it in a language Steve had never heard before. (And Steve had heard a lot of languages.)

He wasn’t even sure of a language in which to thank the man. He also wasn’t sure that these seemingly human, but strange, deep ocean-faring people weren’t a second from attacking them all or the one man from taking a bite out of Alpine.

The man holding Alpine placed the animal down gently on a step with shallow water and looked up at the explorers. He seemed to think to himself for half a second before saying in very clear Akkadian, “Who are you?”

No one replied. Steve took a second to shake the water out of his ears to make sure he had heard correctly. The Akkadian language had been dead for many millennia.

The man seemed to realize his mistake and switched languages. “Who are you?” he asked, this time in Old Norse. 

Steve grinned. 

“We are explorers,” he answered back. “And we are trapped. Who are you?”

The entire group watched as Steve rattled the dead language back to this man as if he had spoken clear English.

“I am a man looking for explorers,” the stranger answered. He stood up and seemed to shake his hair back from his face a little before addressing the team on the stairwell in a sentence that only got him blank stares in return.

No one said a word. 

“He wants to know if any of us are ... infinity current workers?” Steve translated with confusion.

The man motioned to a crystal hanging from a long necklace around his neck. It was the same glowing aquamarine of the water, and Steve seemed to notice that the others who had emerged from the water were all wearing them too.

“What language is he even asking in?” Clint questioned. 

“Old Norse,” Steve laughed in disbelief, eyes never veering from the stranger. “Well, at first he asked in a dead language that hasn’t been around since before even Atlantis was lost. But then he looked us over and must have decided we were Nordic.”

“You’re English?” the mysterious man asked in perfect English sending everyone for a surprise. 

“We speak English,” Steve clarified. “We are from many different places. Where are you from?”

The man smiled proudly and motioned to his friends. “We are from Atlantis.”


	5. Chapter 5

“A-A-A-Atlantis?” Steve sputtered. He ran his hair over his forehead, brushing water from his face and dripping hair.

The man didn’t deign to repeat himself.

“My name is James,” he said instead, nodding his head a little in Steve’s direction. It was obvious that despite Steve looking a bit like a drowned rat, the man had decided he was their leader. 

“James?” Sam laughed. “A guy telling us he’s from Atlantis is named James?

“James is an ancient name,” Steve replied, but James himself interrupted.

“Yes, James, Crown Prince of Atlantis.” He looked a bit cocky as he eyed Sam, but the doctor recovered well. 

He stepped closer and reached his hand out. “I’m Dr. Samuel Wilson. And we’re not infinity current workers or whatever you said, but we are a skilled team, so any assistance we can be to you we are willing to offer, but we too have a request.”

—⍟-⍟-⍟— 

Sam had brokered a deal that had the Atlanteans bringing their ship to the surface almost immediately and rounding the whole of them up from the marble steps to be escorted to Atlantis. 

Steve clutched a wet Alpine as warm air blew on both of them. They were huddled with the rest of the team on the mysterious ship and headed towards the mysterious team’s homeland. Steve had no choice but to trust them. None of them did, especially as the glowing submarine took them back deep beneath the surface.

The ship was clean, bright, and spacious. None of them were crowded the way they had been into the pods just hours ago. From where Steve sat, he took mental notes of everything. Windows, lights, buttons, seats, screens, and air vents were all circular. Everything inside seemed to match the same design, but Steve knew the outside had been longer and more torpedoed. It had even had fins as if they were riding inside a shark. Every screen gave off the same dark aquamarine glow that the ship had turned the water and Steve shook his head in disbelief. If Tony’s ship had been high tech, this ship could only be described as something futuristic. None of them had ever seen tech like this before. 

“They have weapons!” Commander Rumlow suddenly pointed out in a panic and Natasha reached for the knife sheathed in her in her boot.

“What’s with the axe?” Rollins demanded. 

“And the guns!” Rumlow nearly shouted, motioning toward the mounted weapons on deck.

“Weapons?” The prince- James, apparently- asked. “No. No. Stay calm. These are light beams.” He walked over to the front deck with its large, glassed-in window, and others on his team cleared out of his way wordlessly. He turned one of the “guns” on and it shone incredibly brightly out into the darkness of the ocean. “These waters are dangerous. We have to be prepared.”

“The axe is just in case of an emergency,” a woman beside James added. “If we become entangled in something or if we lose power and have to break free and swim to the surface. It’s never happened to my knowledge, but it’s a tradition to have one and there’s no harm in being prepared.”

“See?” Steve said with a wave of his hand. “They’re not here to be weapons.”

Rumlow and Rollins pursed their lips, but neither said a word.

—⍟-⍟-⍟— 

James came over and sat next to Steve with a friendly expression. Now that Steve was this close to him and had been given the chance to get over the initial shock of seeing him, he was able to get a better look. The prince moved regally, like he’d been suave and charming his entire life without any real intention of it. However, what really caught Steve’s attention this close were the tattoos across James’s skin. Steve had seen the ones across his face before, when James had burst from the water and onto the steps, but they weren’t his focus then. Now, he couldn’t look away. Blue dotted lines curved and swirled over James’s cheek and forehead and when he moved, Steve could tell there was something green and woven over James’s left side and hip.

“What happened with you?” James asked, pulling Steve from his thoughts while handing him another towel besides the one had been given before he got on board.

“I fell in?” Steve admitted with a sheepish expression as he made himself look away from James’s body. “I was after this moron.” He motioned to the cat in his arms.

James looked at the animal. 

“What is it?” he asked, peering curiously at the feline. 

“Some kind of fluffy white cat. I don’t know the breed. He came from a shelter.”

“Did you say ‘cat?’”

Steve looked at the prince with confusion. “Yeah. He’s a cat?”

James immediately looked eager to touch Alpine again. 

“May I?” he asked the animal as he reached his hand out.

“Go ahead,” Steve allowed, even moving to hold Alpine out a little (much to the cat’s annoyance).

“I never thought I would get to see a real one,” James said with a look of wonder. “I’ve read about them, but the old art makes them look a little different and-“

“Are you telling me you don’t have cats in Atlantis?”

James laughed and shook his head. “No. If we ever did, they’ve died out. I’ve only seen one of these in history books and ancient artwork.”

Steve nodded as if to indicate that James could pet Alpine, and the prince’s hands came up to run through the cat’s damp fur.

Steve took the moment to use the extra towel to better dry the streaks off of his glasses.

“So what’s an infinity current worker?” Steve asked as he slid the glasses back on just in time to see James’s face darken.

“I don’t know exactly. We just need someone with a connection to the earth.” James hesitated and then looked Steve’s face over before shrugging. “I’ll show you. Maybe someone from your side can help.” 

“Well, I don’t know for sure, but we can always try,” Steve offered without hesitation. 

James smiled and nodded diplomatically. “When we get back to Atlantis, I’ll speak to my brother.”

“Is he king?” Steve asked nervously. 

“He is in charge,” James corrected before standing up and walking back to the helm to join members of his crew.

—⍟-⍟-⍟— 

Steve listened to their language the entire time he sat there, and by the time they had completed their trip a half-hour later, he had picked up on enough words and expressions to put together the basic roots and syntax of their language. 

He flipped open the journal that he felt he had done nothing but stare at for almost two weeks now and then paused. There were empty spaces that he wanted to write on, but he knew he couldn’t scribble on such a priceless artifact, so he found himself flipping the pages with one hand and using the other to write phantom messages across his leg- a memory technique if nothing else. 

“Hey, you need some paper?” Sam asked as he opened his own bag. “I’ve got a folder with some empty pages if you do.”

“Oh, thank you. I left my notebook with Tony and Rhodey and I’m just trying to figure out their language.” He nodded toward some of the Atlanteans. “It’s got- well, the same root as the Gaelic languages, but there’s clear Nordic influence as well. Overlay that with a little Sumerian and definitely a number of loan words from Thessalonian, Greek, and Elban.”

Sam looked a little lost, but Natasha just laughed. “He’s like a child at Christmas.”

Steve began to scratch down notations- the majority of which weren’t even in the same alphabet- and Sam just arched his brow and walked away.

“What’s ‘bucky?’”Steve asked one of the workers from the Atlantis team, but the man only looked at him with a scowl and bypassed him without a word. 

Steve went back to studying his journal.

“I don’t think they’re impressed,” Natasha murmured back to Sam, but Commander Rumlow overheard.

“They don’t trust us and he’s asking questions they don’t want to answer. He needs to learn to keep his trap shut.”

“He’s just curious about them,” Natasha said lowly. “He studies languages. This is his passion. Let him have his fun.”

“Why? It won’t matter anyway.”

“Of course it matters. Look, I know this wasn’t our plan and we didn’t expect to find people living down here, but this changes everything.” 

Rumlow only shook his head and muttered as he turned away. “This changes nothing.” 

—⍟-⍟-⍟— 

Everyone from the exploration team seemed to sit upright when the submarine surfaced.

Rumlow’s eyes were huge as the land came into view. “Holy mother of-“

“Poseidon,” Prince James spoke, motioning to a large bronze statue standing out from the water. “The high god and protector of Atlantis.”

“You’re not telling us you still believe that baloney,” Rumlow laughed.

James cut him a sharp look. 

“Are you going to try to convince us that there’s a reasonable scientific explanation for a culture to thrive for thousands of years in an undetectable air pocket with no direct sunlight beneath volcanic rock in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean?”

A woman standing next to James looked amused, but said nothing to them. She turned to James, however, and said something Steve was still working on understanding. He did pick up on the words “anger” and “brother” however.

Whatever it was, James dismissed it immediately, and she walked away to do something in the cockpit as the submarine pulled closer to the land. 

The land mass was incredible and imposing. Steve never would have imagined something so tall and stately being so far beneath the ocean. The land was made of three circular landmasses, each one encircling a central round mass that held an obvious shrine in the center.

“Poseidon,” James reminded him as he caught Steve staring. “And my home.“ He motioned while pointing to a large building made of red and black and bronze smooth stones.

“Marble?” he asked.

“Our own special marble,” James said with a smile. “And bronze, the most remarkable alloy.”

“Bronze,” Steve said to himself. “I would have expected your metals to be gold or copper. Maybe iron.”

“We use those too,” James replied, confused as the submarine pulled into a reserved space and the ship’s glass covering slid back to allow them to debark. “I want you all to follow me,” he announced to the team. “You’re all to meet my brother, Prince Namor.”

—⍟-⍟-⍟— 

The young prince led the team across bridges of bronze and colored marble from one land mass to the next, each time showing them things excitedly as he went. 

There were flowers Steve had never seen before and small waterfalls all around the footpaths. There were lights settled in the water and built to extend out of stones, but none of them were lit. Colorful fish came up to the tops of the surface to peer back at the prince and his newly acquired gang of outsiders. 

Steve couldn’t help but keep looking upward. He knew they were underwater. He could see it all around, but it held itself in place like a watery dome above them. The edges of the ruptured volcano could be seen around the far edges of the land mass, but it wasn’t holding the water up exactly. And while Steve felt sure there was a perfectly reasonable explanation, the only thing he could come up with to explain why the water didn’t come tumbling down and collapse upon the entire place was, “Magic.”

James looked at him rather hopefully, but Steve was too busy studying an inscription he saw over the doorway of a building to notice.

He copied the words down onto the paper he had tucked away in the journal and continued to follow the path to the palace. 

The throne was in an outside courtyard and Steve saw it long before James was close enough to duck his head in respect to the man sitting on the throne and clear his throat.

“Brother-“

The first words from the other man were angry and Steve’s mind couldn’t quite keep up as he tried to figure them out. Something about the city and life and-

He pulled out the journal he had just put away moments before and started flipping through hoping for a little assistance. 

“Brother!” James spoke again. “They may be able to help us! We have to let them try!”

Steve could understand that somewhat and then-

“Bucky-“ 

There was that term again. It would help if he knew how to pronounce these words in the book. It would help if they were written in an alphabet he better understood.

“Excuse me, King, Sir-“ Rumlow’s voice broke through the argument the princes were having and he stepped in front of Steve rather pointedly. “On behalf of my crew, may I say that it is an honor to be welcomed to your city.”

“Brock,“ Steve hissed. 

“You presume much to think that you are welcome here,” the man on the throne responded in English as he stood up. 

“Sir, my team and I have come a long way and gone through many dangers and difficulties looking for-“

“Commander,“ Steve whispered, but was again ignored. 

“I know what you seek,” the prince barked back. “And you will not find it here.”

“Namor!” James cursed and Steve remembered that was the man’s name.

“Bucky,“ Namor snapped back. 

Bucky. Bucky. A title? Some Atlantean version of James?

Steve scribbled “Bucky = James” on one of the loose pages. 

“Your journey has been in vain,” Namor explained to Rumlow. “This has all been in vain,” he said more directly as he turned back to James. 

James gritted his teeth. 

“We are peaceful explorers,” Rumlow tried to reason. “We’re men of science.”

Carol cleared her throat from somewhere behind him.

“Men of science bring weapons?” Namor asked with a sarcastic air to his words as he nodded toward Thor’s bag bulging with obvious explosives.

“Weapons?” Rumlow laughed. “Those were only brought along to remove obstacles that may be in our way.”

Namor scoffed and sat back down heavily. “Some obstacles cannot be removed by sheer force.” He waved his hand dismissively. “You cannot stay here. We do not entertain intruders. You must leave Atlantis at once.”

“Your majesty, be reasonable!” Rumlow argued, but Steve motioned for him to stop.

“Stand aside,” Rumlow snapped in Steve’s direction before taking a step closer to Prince Namor. 

Numerous guards all stepped closer to both Namor and James. 

“Might I suggest that we stay just one night?” Rumlow asked. “One night to rest and resupply, to buy fuel for our ships. And then we can put this all behind us tomorrow.”

“One night, that is all,” Namor replied, his words clipped. 

Namor motioned to guards to escort them away and they all turned away with heavy hearts. 

But Steve was almost sure James’s heart looked the heaviest when he turned back. James heaved a sigh and looked at Steve with the saddest eyes he had possibly ever seen as he walked away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When you don't know you're a cat person until you meet one for the first time. ♥


	6. Chapter 6

Steve couldn’t get the prince’s sad expression out of his head as he was led to his room. He couldn’t deny that it was nice to have a little time and space away from the others on the team, but he also didn’t feel he had time to waste with a nap or dawdling. If they were to leave tomorrow, Steve had to learn all that he could tonight.

The marble door seemed to close behind him all by itself, or, no, with the touch of the crystal necklace worn by his escort to the lock. The crystal was glowing a soft purple and the door lock lit up the same color as it hissed and slid closed. Steve’s mind flashed back to Prince James’s crystal; it had been glowing the same blue that had emanated from the water when the submarine lit up the dark, murky waters.

“It’s some kind of battery,” he said to himself. “It’s sending an electric pulse to the device to power it.”

He shook his head and tried to clear away the confusion on how that worked exactly as he set Alpine’s carrier down and freed him into their new quarters. Then he turned and looked at the room where they had been left. He had to sketch this immediately. The whole room was circular and the ceiling was a dome. The window took up nearly the entire wall on one side and it too was circular. The floor was sleek marble, but the soft rug on it looked like a lush moss and was a perfect circle. The lights, the mirror, the pillows were all circular. Even the bed was a large circle shape. 

Steve wished he had a camera. It would take too long to sketch everything in the detail he desired to remember. 

There was an oval device with a glowing screen lying on the small round table on one side of the room. Steve walked over to it and reached out to touch the screen when images appeared across it. Atlantean images, but Steve found he understood them faster than he had been struggling to read the language anyway. The device welcomed him to the hotel with a happy little noise and image of a bed and waterfall, and Steve reached into his bag for the journal so that he could record the exact images.

Rather than flip directly to the loose pages Sam had given him, he flipped through a few pages he had already read, looking to see if the images were symbols his grandfather had encountered and recorded before. When he didn’t see anything, he found himself sidetracked and wondering again why his grandfather hadn’t left more information on how to speak the language when he had clearly known how to read it. The Atlantean alphabet looked like spirals- little words of circling designs- and nothing at all that Steve would know how to start pronouncing except that he had heard it spoken many times now, so bits of it had started to come together. All he needed was someone willing to read it out loud to him so that he could start putting the sounds and writing together.

Alpine made some garbled noise from where he was exploring the edges of the strange window. 

“Stupid to be able to translate without speaking,” Steve muttered to the cat. It wasn’t the only language that way, but it didn’t mean it didn’t frustrate him to no end.

He flipped another page and suddenly something caught his eye that he hadn’t noticed before. Very carefully and very close to the spine, a single page had been removed from the journal.

“Is that my pronunciation page?!” he asked out loud as if the ghost of his grandfather was going to suddenly appear and fill him in. “I can’t believe this. Where would one page go?” he asked himself. He sat down on the circular rug and leaned back against the circular bed. “He probably left me all of the information I needed and someone’s taken that single page!” 

Steve ran his hand through his hair and adjusted his glasses when there was a knock on the door. 

He noticed for the first time that the door he had walked through earlier was oval.

“What do these people have against corners?” Steve asked under his breath as he set down the journal on the bed before he stepped over to the door and opened it. 

He had expected to see one guard or one maid or maybe one member of the kitchen staff delivering food, but instead Steve found nine people standing outside his door. The entire team stood looking at him expectantly, and then Rumlow said very seriously, “You need to go talk to that prince.”

—⍟-⍟-⍟— 

Armed with only his satchel and his ability to talk to strangers, Steve left Alpine and the team behind to go and find Prince James. 

“I have some questions for you and- and I’m not leaving this place until I have answers,” he practiced in his head as he walked on stone bridges toward the outdoor courtyard where he had last seen the other man.

Suddenly, a hand reached up from the water as he crossed over one of the bridges and the exact man in question surfaced to look at Steve. 

“I have questions for you and you are not leaving this place until they are answered,” the prince said, shaking his wet hair from his face, but not loosening his grip on Steve’s ankle.

Steve was sure the startled look on his face was obvious, but after only a small sound of terror, he relaxed and nodded.

“O-Okay.”

James hopped out of the water and shook off like it was the easiest thing in the world. Water seemed to slide from his body and his minimal clothing, and Steve had to look away to keep from staring. 

When earlier, the prince’s body had been covered in a heavy robe and trousers down his mid-calves, Steve hadn’t been too tempted to stare, but now, the beautifully toned body of the prince was on display, and Steve caught himself swallowing a dry feeling before he even realized it was happening. James’s arms were covered in blue tattoos, his chest displaying the same designs.

“Come with me,” the prince said at once and then turned to leave, but turned back around almost just as quickly. “Where is your cat?”

“Cats don’t exactly follow behind you like some other animals. He’s in the room I was lodged-“

“Ah, no! I wanted to see him!” Steve wasn’t positive, but he was half-sure that was a pout on the prince’s face.

“Is that what you wanted to ask me?” 

“No, no. I’m distracted. I wanted to ask you about-“ He stopped mid-sentence and looked around. Then he made a motion with the jerk of his head and grabbed Steve’s hand. James practically dragged Steve along as he hurried down stone pathways and through some shallow waters. Steve’s was distantly reminded that his shoes had been submerged in water while on his feet twice now within only a few hours.

“Okay, here,” James hissed, pushing Steve behind a small but loud waterfall and farther into a surprisingly quiet little alcove where the water lapped steadily at the stones he stood on and large trees hung with low, lush branches. Steve’s hand felt on fire where the prince had touched it. No one else seemed to be around, so Steve took a hesitant step away from James and knelt down and took off his cold, wet shoes.

The rocks felt firm and warm under his feet. The little enclosed area looked beautiful. It seemed all of Atlantis was covered with lush greens and exotic flowers and occasionally a reptile or an amphibian that Steve was nearly positive weren’t native to anywhere else he had ever been.

“I have so many questions!” James said excitedly, jumping to grab both of Steve’s hands. “How did you find us? How did you get past the leviathan? How long ago did the flood waters recede? What energies run your cities?”

“Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!” Steve laughed and pulled his hands away. “One question at a time might work best, right?”

James looked unamused. “Would you like to start?”

“How did you get here?” Steve asked, looking up at the dome of water surrounding Atlantis. “I mean, how did all of this get down here?”

“There are a few theories,” came the reply, and James looked down at his bare feet. “Either we made a mistake and somehow miscalculated and overpowered the volcano. That’s one theory. Or the one most people favour to account for-“ He motioned to the watering sky. “The other gods became jealous of Atlantis. They sent a great cataclysm- a volcano, a tsunami, a flood- all in just hours to our small island nation. But Poseidon was permitted to save us as we are his people, his city. So the other gods banished us here, but Poseidon protected us. All that my ancestors reported remembering is the sky going dark and people shouting and running. And then a bright light shone above the city and broke into colorful pieces and spread the energies throughout all of us.” 

He picked up the glowing blue crystal hanging around his neck and held it out to show Steve. “Everyone in Atlantis has the infinity energy given to us by Poseidon. The current of it runs through all of us and all that we do.”

“What’s it do?” Steve asked. 

“It’s my turn to ask a question,” the prince responded quickly. “How did you find us here?”

“Well,” Steve started. He reached into his satchel and pulled out the journal and flipped it open. “It wasn’t easy. First, I had to figure out what this journal that my grandfather left me even was. And then I had to follow the clues and maps that he’d left inside. It was kind of like a treasure-“

James snatched the book from Steve’s hands and began to flip through the pages. “Where is your language? The English?” 

“Only some of the words on those pages,” Steve said, pointing to the ones tucked into the back. “Please be careful and don’t get them wet. That’s all I’ve been able to record so far.”

The prince flipped to the loose leaf pages and looked at what Steve had written. There were English words and notes here and there, but much of it he had written in Celtic to try to capture the Atlantean language, and then parts he had written in the circular Atlantean language itself. James stopped. “You wrote this?”

Steve wasn’t sure what James was asking. “...Yes.”

“From where did you copy it?”

Steve looked confused, furrowing his brow. “From-from nowhere. I just- they’re just small notations. You didn’t read it?” He pushed the notebook up higher so the prince could read the notes, but he ignored them. 

“You can read it? Atlantean?” James asked.

“It took a little practice,” Steve admitted with a shrug. “But I am good at something and it just so happens to be deciphering old languages so this one-“

“You can _read_ Atlantean?” James asked again.

Steve laughed without understanding James’s excitement. “Yes!” he answered. “I can read it the same as you! Only I don’t know how to speak it yet. But read it? Yeah, we both can do that.”

He stopped rambling enough to see James’s face. His mouth was open, his eyes were wide, and the prince was looking back and forth between the journal and the man in front of him when realization dawned on Steve.

“You can’t read it, can you?”

“No one can.”

“But there are inscriptions. You even have words over your doorways. Surely someone-“

“They’re here from before.”

Steve’s eyes went wide then and James thrust the journal back at him, flipping to a page of full Atlantean.

“Read this. Read here.” 

“I can only read it after I translate it to English. I don’t know your pronunciations,” Steve warned.

“How did you figure out the written words?”

“Charts and maps at first, and then there’s a very informative account of the building of the canals and some about Poseidon and-“

“Read it!”

Steve looked down at the page, reading slowly so that he could translate as he spoke. 

_“Apart from short and refreshing rain showers, late summer is Atlantis's driest season. Temperatures remain cool even on the warmest days and-“_

“We used to be much colder. We didn’t live like this,” James said with a motion to his mostly unclothed body.

“Well, you-“ Steve glanced up to see where the prince had gestured and his eyes landed on James’s abs. He swallowed thickly. “You, you, uh, your climate’s changed,” he finished lamely, his attention anywhere but on climate. “We haven’t been properly introduced. I’m Steve Rogers.”

He held out his hand that James only looked at with a raised eyebrow. 

“I’m Prince James Buchanan,” he replied, taking Steve’s hand and folding his around it for them to hold hands. “But you are very welcome to call me Bucky.”

In his other hand, he held a loose page out and Steve realized Bucky had actually taken the page with his name scrawled across it from the back of the journal. 

“That’s what everyone close to me calls me.”

“Are-“ Steve wasn’t sure it was appropriate, but he had to ask now. “Are we close now?”

Bucky smiled. “I’d like to be.” 

Steve’s expression must have looked like he had witnessed a miracle, but Bucky didn’t even seem to see it. He shoved the page at Steve, let go of his hand, and then motioned him along.

Steve had to struggle to put the journal back into his bag before Bucky had them climbing a rock wall and jumping down into a mossy closed off area with a small pool of deep, clear water.

A strange looking structure sat there- looking old without looking aged. Outwardly, it appeared to be some kind of large, metallic fish, but-“

“Is that some kind of vehicle?” Steve asked as he noticed a steering wheel.

Bucky’s brow was furrowed now. “It doesn’t work. I’ve tried and I’ve tried, but no matter what-“ He shrugged helplessly. 

Steve noticed the small Atlantean text inscribed across a part of it and realized what Bucky wanted from him.

“It says, uh, ‘Place crystal into slot,’”

“Yes, yes, I’ve done that,” Bucky said with a wave of his hand. 

Steve pushed his glasses up and kept reading. “‘Gently place your hand on the inscription pad.’”

“Yes!” Bucky responded with an exasperated breath. 

“Okay, did you turn the crystal one-quarter turn back?”

“Yes!”

“While your hand was on the inscription pad?”

“Yea- No.” Bucky’s expression felt flat. 

“There’s your problem,” Steve smirked. “No big deal. That’s an easy thing to miss. You deserve credit for figuring out what you did.”

He stopped when he saw Bucky did not look remotely impressed with the unintentionally patronizing words.

Steve held his hand out toward the vehicle. “Give it a try?”

Bucky stepped up to the vehicle while Steve stepped back. 

“Hey, why’s it a vehicle shaped like a fish?”

“Why wouldn’t it be?” Bucky asked as he followed the instructions Steve had translated.

“Everything else is round.”

“...Yes?”

“Why wouldn’t this be round too?”

“Round is not very aerodynamic. Many things are circular to draw a connection between our round island and the canals that encircle it. Everything else is wavy or fluid like the water.”

“Like your written language,” Steve said, motioning to the inscribed text on the vehicle.

“Exactly,” Bucky said, removing his palm from the inscription pad. 

Suddenly the vehicle came to life, rising up from where it had sat on the ground and hovering beside the men in the air.

“Whoa,” Steve breathed. “The only flying car I’ve ever seen was at a science fair and it broke down a few seconds later.”

“I am assured, these worked,” Bucky laughed. “With this, I can show you all of Atlantis in no time at all.”

“How fast does it go?” Steve asked, stepping closer again and placing a single finger on the inscription pad. 

In a flash, the vehicle took off at top speed. Steve and Bucky gasped simultaneously as it zipped to life and sped past them. It whirled around in a circle and then turned on them, flying low enough that the two men had to grab one another and duck for cover. A second later, the vehicle crashed headfirst into the side of a large rock wall and crumbled to the ground, sparking a strange energy and then dying completely. Steve and Bucky looked on helplessly from where they had taken cover on the hard rocky ground.

It was only as they started to laugh a relieved laugh that Steve realized Bucky’s arm was around his waist. Steve had grabbed Bucky’s arm and pulled away quickly, but Bucky was less interested in detaching himself so quickly. He only let go to stand up and offer a hand out to Steve. Steve took it, feeling an energy now thrum through him as Bucky helped him to his feet. A nervous, relieved kind of laugh took over them both as they dropped hands and looked at the damaged vehicle, and then Bucky simply said, “Oops.”

—⍟-⍟-⍟— 

“Where are you taking me?” Steve asked, this time following Bucky more freely. He had left his shoes and satchel with the journal behind at Bucky’s insistence, and then continued to follow him to more remote areas of the island. 

They climbed over rocks and ducked under branches, and twice they climbed over old ruins that Bucky couldn’t understand why Steve was so fascinated by.

Finally, they reached a large, clear, natural pool with ruins of an ancient building jutting up from the water.

“I need you to read what’s down here,” Bucky said pointing toward where the water lapped peacefully around the ancient building. He jerked his head for Steve to follow, shed the cloak covering the upper half of his body, and dove in.

Steve did not jump in. 

It took a few seconds, but Bucky eventually noticed he wasn’t being followed and he turned around and went back to the edge of the water. 

He emerged only with his head and said with a confused voice. “Uh, you have to come with me.”

Steve looked at the deep water and tilted his head. “I don’t exactly have the best track record with swimming. I almost drowned in Mr. Brandt’s swimming pool when I was eleven. And I don’t really go show off at the Y even now.”

Bucky just blinked up at Steve. 

“How are you going to read this if you don’t come down here?”

“That’s not shallow water!” Steve answered, pointing a finger at it. “I can’t hold my breath that long.”

Bucky’s unamused, blinking face suddenly looked perplexed. “I’m not asking you to hold your breath.”

Steve sent Bucky a confused look in turn. 

“Then how am I supposed to read it?”

“With your eyes.”

“Oh, so just swim deep into salt water and open my eyes and read you something from an underwater ruin from a place that doesn’t exist. This day is turning out to be a piece of cake.”

“Cake?” Bucky asked, now looking just as confused as Steve was. 

“‘Piece of cake,’ Steve repeated. “It’s an expression that means something is easy. And I said this wouldn’t be that.”

“Why not?” Bucky asked, now bringing himself farther out of the water to sit on the bank. Steve looked his torso up and down. The green woven tattoo on his hip was something possibly Celtic or the precursor to something Celtic. And Bucky had the blue dotted lines inked along his arm and chest as well. An intricate design covered Bucky’s right shoulder as well and Steve wanted to touch them, but he pulled himself back to the present.

“I get the feeling you swim all the time,” Steve said, holding his hands out and motioning to Bucky’s body that was glistening again with water. “But I don’t so I can’t just jump in and swim that deep. And I can’t just open my eyes and read something in salt water. My eyes will burn for the next three days if I open them like that under there.”

“Your people don’t swim?” Bucky asked, slowly putting things together. 

“Of course we swim,” Steve answered. “But not like your people. You swim like fish.”

“Like _fish?!”_ Bucky laughed. It was a bright and happy sound, but Steve could tell instantly that Bucky was confused. “Not at all. We swim like _people._ How do your people swim?”

“Well, unless you’re an Olympian, it’s not usually very fast or very graceful. And we can’t hold our breaths very long.”

“Olympians? You mean Greeks? Have they started back the Olympics?”

“Olympians come from all countries these days, and anyone qualified can compete, but I can’t help but feel you’d be disqualified for the swimming portion. It wouldn’t be fair to the others. You’re too good. I mean, you seem like you can hold your breath for a really long time and I can’t even hold mine for two minutes. I’d never make it that far.” Steve pointed at the ruin deep in the water again. “I wouldn’t be able to make it down there before I ran out of air.”

Steve stopped babbling when he noticed Bucky was looking at him like he’d just sprouted fins and a tail.

“What? You’re doing it again. That staring thing is creepy.”

Bucky blinked a few times and then an incredibly perplexed expression crossed his face. 

“Why do you need to hold your breath?” he asked so innocently Steve could have imagined the question had come from a child, but a full grown man was the only one around. Steve still double checked even though the question had been asked in Bucky’s voice.

“Why do I- Why do-“ He stopped instantly and looked at Bucky with the most bug-eyed expression he had probably given anyone in his entire life. “You don’t hold your breath while swimming? You don’t have to?”

Bucky shook his head no as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “We never have to. Why do you?”

“Our lungs don’t accept water,” Steve explained. 

Bucky looked at Steve’s chest like he thought he would be able to see the defect in Steve’s lungs. 

“You don’t have the amount of water that we do,” he concluded. 

“Some places have plenty of water. We just don’t swim in it as swiftly or as smoothly as your people, and I don’t think anyone at all can breathe it.”

Bucky looked confused for a second and then an idea seemed to strike him at once. “Come with me.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is mostly dialogue. I'm sorry. I don't know what happened.

“Bucky?”

Steve had been led back to the same place where he had stood in an outside courtyard earlier, but this time, Bucky had taken him far up a rocky slope and then showed him where to slip into a back window. 

It was definitely Steve’s first time inside a palace and he wasn’t sure what he had been expecting, but not this. Everything inside the palace was circular or wavy in design, prompting Steve to be glad he had been allowed to go back and grab his satchel and shoes. He was going to draw this place as soon as he got half a chance. 

But for now, Steve stood there barefoot on dark marble floors and holding his wet shoes as Bucky knocked and a door opened to them.

“Becca, Becca, Becca-“ Bucky chanted, breezing past her and pulling Steve along. “We need to borrow your crystal.”

Becca, as Bucky had called her, did not look sold on the idea, but at least she was kind enough to argue with Bucky in English so Steve could understand her discomfort.

“Namor had the Surfacers sent to nice quarters with good food brought to them. Why are you running around with one? And why is he all wet?”

She looked at Steve’s wet shoes in his hands and his wet feet that he had yet to move off of her front rug.

“Oh.” Bucky seemed to remember and grabbed a hand towel from Becca’s sink and brought it back to Steve, pitching it his way.

“Bucky!” Becca scolded, but the towel had hit the ground so she motioned for Steve to go ahead.

“This is my sister,” Bucky explained to Steve quickly as if explaining who she was would justify letting a stranger dry his feet with her clean hand towel. 

Becca crossed her arms and cleared her throat pointedly, waiting for an explanation for them barging into her quarters. 

“Becca, this is Steve from the Surface. Now, remember the submerged mural we found when we were little? The one with the star?”

She looked confused, but nodded. “Of course I do. It was the most amazing thing we ever found as children.”

“Steve can read it,” Bucky said with a gesture of his hand toward Steve.

Becca jerked her head over to look Steve up and down.

“A Surfacer can read Atlantean?”

“Yes.”

“How? No, no, never mind that! What are you _here_ for? What are you waiting on? Take him there now!”

“He can’t breathe in the water.”

Becca looked taken aback. She scrutinized Steve up and down again and much more thoroughly this time.

“What’s wrong with our water?”

“Oh, no, nothing, your highness? Your grace? I can’t breathe in any water. Before today, I’ve never met anyone who could.”

Becca looked just as surprised as Bucky had. “You’re telling me none of the Surfacers can breathe underwater?”

“It’s why we need the crystal!” Bucky emphasized.

The Princess looked skeptical. 

“Please, please do it for me.” Bucky made the saddest face and the biggest eyes he could manage, an expression Steve realized that must be universal for begging. 

Then suddenly a cry rang out from the next room.

“Do it for Kimbra,” Bucky pleaded, motioning in the direction of the sound. “Do it for her future. Let her see Atlantis how it was meant to be seen.”

“Excuse me,” Becca said, stepping away from the conversation to go down a wavy hallway that Steve assumed led to the rest of her home. 

“Why do we need her crystal?” Steve whispered. 

Bucky lifted the crystal hanging around his neck and held it out in his palm to Steve.

“These are our gifts from the gods. From Poseidon. They protect us, heal us, and give us abilities.”

“Everyone?”

“Some gifts to everyone. Some to the royal family uniquely.”

Steve furrowed his brow and tried to study the crystal in Bucky’s hand. Admittedly, it was the most mystifying thing Steve had seen here if he excluded the dome of water overhead or the lights glowing beneath the water along the walkways or the fact that apparently everyone could breathe underwater.

“Why do I need one?”

“To swim. These crystals will allow you to become the best at your abilities. You can ‘hold your breath’ long enough to go deep beneath the water and help us translate the words on the mural.”

“I’m going to get that from a rock?” Steve asked, confused. 

“A stone,” Becca corrected as she came back into the room carrying a little girl with dark curly hair and big, blue eyes the same as Bucky’s and her own. “It’s an infinity stone.”

Steve noticed that even the little child was wearing one. 

“It’s a stone and it’s dying,” Bucky explained. “The crystals give us our ability to stay beneath the water for so long. And they give us other abilities. And they are for healing, but they are dying. It’s why I need you.”

Steve looked over at Becca who only nodded to confirm Bucky’s words.

“Atlantis is dying,” she agreed solemnly. “And the mural? We think it can help. We think it can tell how to save this place and our people.” She glanced at her daughter in her arms.

“I’ll help however I can,” Steve told them and Bucky reached out and clasped Steve’s hand. 

“Thank you.”

Steve glanced at their hands and then swallowed the fiery sensation that was bubbling up in him. Bucky let go slowly.

Becca reached around her neck and took off the crystal she was wearing. She looked at it with reverence and hope before she passed it over to Steve carefully. 

Bucky and his sister both watched as Steve hesitantly placed it over his head to hang from his own neck and then looked back up at him and Becca. 

Becca nodded approvingly.

“If you can really read the mural, you were meant to find us. Or we were meant to find you. You were sent here by Poseidon. Find out how to save us and then bring that back to me.” She pointed at the crystal.

Steve gripped it. “I’ll do my best.”

As they turned to leave, Becca grabbed at Bucky’s arm and asked quietly, “What is your intention with-“

“I don’t know,” he admitted with a less-than-confident shrug and pulled away. 

—⍟-⍟-⍟— 

“Your clothes could stand to be better made for water,” Bucky admonished as he watched Steve strip down to his underwear. Steve looked regretful. 

“I would usually think you were odd for that suggestion, but after seeing yours...”

“Are you planning to wear those?” Bucky asked with a nod toward Steve’s underpants. 

“...Yes,” he answered uneasily. 

Bucky looked confused, but didn’t argue. “Suit yourself. Try out the crystal.”

Steve waded into the unnaturally warm waters. This far north and this far below sea level, these waters should be freezing, but it felt like wading out into bath water.

“This place is incredible,” he mused as he looked at the clear waters around him. “It challenges everything we think we know.”

He took a deep breath and sank beneath the gentle water to count the seconds silently to himself, and was only disrupted several minutes later when Bucky dove in and startled him. He tugged Steve back to the surface with an excited grin. 

“Looks like it’s working,” Bucky said before shaking his head to get his wet hair back from his face. 

Steve caught himself looking at Bucky’s bare body again. Tanned and toned and tattooed with colorful ink, and Steve couldn’t pull his eyes away.

“And you don’t have to close your eyes underwater,” Bucky said, pulling Steve’s attention back toward his face. “It’s not salt water like the old water was. It’s clean and fresh water.”

Steve licked his wet lips and realized in amazement that Bucky was right again. 

“Follow me!” Bucky said with a motion of his hand and he dove smoothly beneath the surface again. 

Steve gulped some air and splashed after him. 

—⍟-⍟-⍟— 

The mural was even farther down than Steve had predicted from the shore. The carvings and paint on it were somehow still easy to read even after thousands of years submerged in the water. 

“Magic,” Steve thought to himself again. 

The entire history of Atlantis’s founding was there on the side of the ancient ruin, and Steve spent a few minutes reading it with the aid of the glowing blue light from the crystal before motioning to the surface. 

Bucky grabbed his hand again and pulled Steve toward the top of the water, but they surfaced somewhere within a hollowed-out area of the ruin itself. Their breaths and splashes of water echoed hollowly off the walls and stone ceiling above them. Again, the crystal lit up their surroundings for them. 

“This is amazing!” Steve announced. “It’s a whole history of Atlantis!”

“I know that. The star in the middle of the city. What does it say about that?” Bucky seemed impatient.

“Star?” Steve asked. “I haven’t gotten to anything about that yet, but don’t worry. I’m gonna keep reading. I’m gonna find out. C’mon!”

He dove back down even faster than Bucky could and both swam back farther down to the mural. Constructing the mural were tiny pieces of different colored marble put together to create a large image. In the picture, there were royal men and boats and deities and in the center there was-

Steve read more and pointed toward the surface in a very excited motion.

“The Heart of Atlantis!” he sputtered. “It’s not a star, Bucky, it’s some kind of crystal called the Heart of Atlantis!”

Bucky looked significantly less enthusiastic than Steve had expected. 

“A crystal like this, Bucky!” he said holding up both the crystal he had borrowed from Becca and then grasping for Bucky’s as well. “What powers these?” Steve asked. “That’s what it’s talking about!”

“We don’t know what powers these,” Bucky admitted. “That’s why we need someone who understands infinity currents. That’s what these are. And they keep everything in Atlantis running. And they’re dying. They get dimmer every day. Many things have stopped working.”

“No, no, that can’t be,” Steve said with a shake of his wet hair. “There has to be a bigger, better one that keeps them going.”

Bucky just closed his eyes and shook his head. “I’ve looked, Steve. Becca has looked. When your team stepped on the pressure plates on that stairwell-“

“Pressure plates? So _that’s_ how you knew we were there.”

“We didn’t know what you were, but I had to go and see. When our crystals go out, we won’t be able to travel anymore. You may be the only Surfacers I ever meet. You’d made it that far. I was hoping you would know how to help us.”

“I _am_ going to help you, Bucky. We’re going to find the Heart of Atlantis. It _has_ to be here.”

“I’ve looked for answers everywhere, Steve! There’s _nothing!”_

“If it’s been running Atlantis since this history,” he said with a motion of his hand toward the mural far below them, “Then it was here even before you came to live this deep. Someone has to know. You’d think something this important would have been in my grandfather’s journal-“

Steve stopped suddenly, face going blank.

“What?”

“The missing page. There’s a ripped out page in the journal.”

“And you think it tells where the information about the Heart is?” Bucky looked excited.

“I thought it was where a pronunciation guide had been," Steve explained, clearly dismissing his own previous assumptions now and trying not to sound disappointed about it. "But it probably held something even more important: a map!”

“You want a pronunciation guide?” Bucky's brow furrowed. “At a time like this?”

“No- yes, yes, but that’s irrelevant right now. Bucky!" He motioned to the crystal hanging from his neck. "These crystals are being powered by the Heart of Atlantis and all we have to do is find it!”

“It doesn’t say where it is? _Nothing?_ No hints? No clues?”

“No, but, but we can find it! Come on!” Steve said delightedly, ducking back under. 

“Steve! Wait!” Bucky yelped and Steve had to resurface again to see what the prince needed. 

“What?”

Bucky reached for Steve’s shoulders and then pulled him forward, planting an excited kiss on his wet lips. 

Steve jerked back in a flash. All excitement had vacated his face and it had been replaced with sheer bewilderment.

“Wh-what are you doing?!”

Bucky looked surprised and then unsure of himself. “I- I thought that was what you wanted. You seemed to like me and I've seen you looking at me and-“

“What?” Steve asked, a loud whisper to his voice now. “You can’t- you can’t just do that!”

“I should have asked. I should have. I know. I’m sorry.”

“What if someone had-“ Steve glanced around, taking in the surroundings of the old ruin around them. “Did you really just bring me somewhere private for that?”

“No,” Bucky laughed. “I brought you here for the mural. The kiss wasn’t planned at all. You were just excited and I got excited and then it just kind of happened.”

“Good thing we were here then,” Steve replied, still whispering and still glancing around like they were going to be caught. “It’s a good place to-“ He lost his words and just motioned between them.

“What does here matter?” 

“Just so no one can see us,” Steve clarified.

Bucky seemed to take in what Steve was saying and agreed, “Yeah, I guess so. It would anger Namor to see me kiss a Surfacer. And it may anger the citizens to see me kiss anyone who is leaving tomorrow.”

“Or, you know, not a woman,” Steve added as if Bucky were missing the most obvious reason. 

“Why would that matter?” Bucky seemed utterly confused.

Steve shook his head like he was shaking himself awake. “Because- because-“ The realization was slow, but he arrived there eventually. “Your citizens don’t mind if you kiss other men?”

“I don’t understand why you think they would.”

Steve’s heart beat wildly and his eyes watered. “May I kiss you again?”

Bucky grinned. “Once or twice, but then we’ve got a crystal to find.”

Steve grabbed Bucky immediately and pressed their lips together again. 

They may have kissed more than once or twice, but hidden beneath the ruins, it was nobody else’s business.


	8. Chapter 8

8  
(3,860)

Steve and Bucky burst out of the water back at the secluded alcove where they had dove in to see the ruin. Bucky surfaced to clear air, but Steve surfaced only to open his eyes and see a pistol pointed directly at his face.

He sputtered and pushed back from the rock he had pulled himself up on.

“You have a nice swim?” Commander Rumlow asked from the other end of the gun. 

“What’s- what’s going on?” Steve asked, starting to wish he weren’t in such a venerable position. He glanced behind Rumlow to see the rest of the crew and half of them were pointing firearms at him.

Rumlow just sneered and didn’t lower the handgun even a fraction.

“Guys,” Steve tried. “What’s- What’s- what’s with all the weapons? Guys?”

No one said a word. Even Thor and Sam and Wanda who had all seemed so innocent and friendly before stared him down coldly now.

“I’m such an idiot,” Steve cursed to himself as he pounded his fist against the rock in front of him. “This is a treasure hunt for you guys, isn’t it? You’re after the crystal!”

Steve flared up defiantly at the commander.

“Oh? You mean this?” he asked, using his free hand to extract a folded piece of paper from his pocket. He unfolded it to reveal the missing page from Steve’s grandfather’s journal.

“The missing page!” Steve practically yelped and Rumlow laughed a heartless sound. “The Heart of Atlantis.” 

“Yeah, about that,” Rumlow laughed coldly. “I would have told you about it sooner, but it was strictly on a need-to-know basis and well, now you know. I had to be sure you were one of us and, uh, it seems you’re doing your part to help now so-“ He stored the pistol away at his side and reached out his hand to Steve, “Welcome to the club, Rogers.”

Steve pushed off the rock and away from Rumlow. “I’m no mercenary!”

Suddenly Rollins was in the water, jerking Bucky up by his hair to the shore. 

Several guns were pointed back on Steve in an instant, but Bucky wasn’t to be stopped. He pushed off of the ground and grabbed Rollins’s legs, causing him to lose his grip on Bucky and hit the stoney beach with a hard thud. Then Bucky jumped up. He grabbed Wanda and Clint at one time. He kneed Clint between the legs and jerked Wanda by her hair before throwing them into one another and toward the water. Next came Peter. Bucky jumped on him, bare legs around his shoulders and flipped him to the ground in an instant before Peter could even realize what happened. The boy pushed away from Bucky and Bucky grabbed him by both hands and slammed him down before pulling a knife from behind him, hidden in the sparse clothing he was wearing. He raised the knife when suddenly it was shot out of his hand. Carol and Thor rushed up to grab onto Bucky, restraining him while Rumlow lazily held the gun he had shot toward Bucky.

“Mercenary?” he asked Steve, blowing the end of the pistol. “I prefer the term ‘adventure capitalist,’ and besides, you should take pride in this, Rogers. After all, you’re the one who got us all here. We would have never made it without you. You led us directly to the treasure trove.” 

Rumlow raised the stolen page again and waved it in his fingers as if to point out his evidence.

“You don’t know what you’re tampering with, Rumlow!” Steve shouted as he pulled himself from the water and onto the rocky ledge.

“What’s there to know?” the commander laughed. “It’s big. It’s shiny. It’s gonna make us a lot of money.” 

“No, no,” Steve protested, ignoring the gun now by Rumlow’s side and storming up to speak right into his face. Self-preservation be damned. “You think it’s some kind of a diamond. I thought it was some kind of a battery. But we are both wrong.” He backed up and motioned to everything around them. “It’s their life source. The crystal on that map is the only thing keeping this place together like this, keeping these people alive. You take it away from them and they’ll all die!”

Rumlow looked at the torn out page again. “Hold on now, Steve. That changes things. Rollins, what do you think?”

Rollins smirked. “Hell, knowing that, I’d double the price.”

“I was thinking triple.”

“Commander, you can’t do this!” Steve argued, about to get in his face again, but he backed up when he saw Rumlow’s gun pointed back at him.

“Academics,” Rumlow scoffed. “You never want to get your hands dirty. Think about this, Rogers. If you returned every stolen artifact from a museum, you’d be left with an empty building. And where’s the educational or historical value in that? Think of this as just providing a necessary service to the historical, geological, and archeological communities. You’d finally be recognized for your work at the museum. Isn’t that what you’ve always wanted to happen?” 

“Nope,” Steve spat back. “I couldn’t be _less_ interested.”

Commander Rumlow sighed and looked at the rest of the team standing and sitting around him. 

“I gotta admit, I’m disappointed,” he said with a shake of his head. “You’re too much of an idealist. Just like your grandfather. Do yourself a favor and don’t be like him, Rogers. For once, be _smart_ about something.” 

Steve clenched his fists and didn’t budge.

Rumlow barely blinked, just shifted the gun slightly. “I must admit I really hate when negotiations go sour,” he said, cocking the gun as it now pointed at Bucky. A handful of the crew were around him now and Rollins grabbed him by his hair and held a knife to this throat. Steve didn’t even open his mouth to protest.

—⍟-⍟-⍟— 

The team threw Bucky with his hands bound behind him down in front of Namor’s throne in the outdoor courtyard as guards rushed out to defend both princes.

“Tell them to drop their weapons!” Rollins barked and Namor gave the order without hesitation. He couldn’t take his eyes off of Bucky, kneeling there with skin mostly bare and hands bound behind him. The crystal still hung from his neck at least.

“We’re looking for-“ Rumlow shrugged, “whatever it is around here keeping all of you alive.” He leveled a look at Namor who didn’t lift his eyes from his brother.

Namor did, however, step forward wordlessly and kneel down to make sure Bucky was unharmed.

“Ask them where it is!” Rumlow shouted at Steve while shoving the page in his face.

“They don’t know,” Steve babbled. “I promise they don’t know. That’s what Bucky and I had been discussing before you interrupted. They honestly don’t know its location.”

 _“Bucky,”_ Rumlow sneered at the name. “Come on. You’re not applying yourself, Steve. There’s got to be something else here.” He reached in Steve’s bag and jerked out the journal. 

“Well, there isn’t!” Steve nearly shouted. “I read every bit of that journal and it isn’t there.”

“Try harder.” Rumlow pushed the torn out page into his face again and Steve took it. 

“It doesn’t tell us anything, Rumlow. It only says, ‘The Heart of Atlantis lies in the eyes of the king.’”

Natasha and Thor grabbed Namor and pinned him back to a marbled pillar. 

“Where is it then?” Rumlow asked, strutting up to Namor. “King?”

“You will destroy yourselves,” Namor spat, looking the commander directly in the eye with his own black pupils and eerily aqua-toned irises.

Rumlow looked away. “Maybe I’m not being perfectly clear.” He punched Namor hard in his stomach and shoved him to the ground before kicking him a few times in rapid succession.

“Commander!” shouted a voice as Sam hurried up to Namor and fell on his knees beside him. “This was _not_ part of the plan!”

“No, the plan was for Rogers over there to figure it out for us or for King Cole here to let us know, but those aren’t working so plans have to change, Doc. I suggest putting a bandaid on that bleeding heart of yours. It’ll only be detrimental to you as a mercenary.”

Rumlow stepped on Namor’s splayed fingers as he walked on by where the prince was crumpled on the stone ground. 

“Well, as usual, diplomacy has failed us.” He sat himself on the throne and pulled out his pistol again. “Now, King, I’m going to count to ten and you’re going to tell us where the crystal is or I’m going to make a mess of this pretty palace floor you’ve got here.”

Namor looked up at Rumlow in time to see him point the handgun directly at his face. 

“One....”

He cocked the pistol. 

“Two...”

Namor stared down the barrel defiantly.

“Nine...”

Bucky tried to scramble to him, but Rollins kicked his knee out from under him causing him to fall forward.

“Te-“

“Namor’s not the king!” Steve shouted.

He still expected to hear the gun go off, but instead everything was silent except for the sounds of nearby waterfalls.

Namor looked across at Bucky and Bucky looked up at Namor.

Rumlow tried to follow Namor’s gaze, but he looked right past Bucky and to the pool of water at the center of the courtyard instead. A circular pattern of stone was planted throughout the water creating a pattern very similar to many other Atlantean words, but this pattern ended in a small whirlpool at the center of the water.

“The eyes of their king,” Rumlow repeated, following Namor’s gaze to the same place again. He stood out of the chair, jerked up Bucky by his hair again, and dragged him across the marbled tiles to the shallow pool. He tossed him into the water, but Steve hurried after, grabbing at Bucky and helping him up.

“Go!” Rollins shouted, and the team stood back as Rumlow and Rollins shoved Bucky and Steve toward the whirlpool. 

The moment their feet landed in the whirlpool, the ground beneath them started to shake and then give way. They weren’t falling in so much as being lowered into a secret vault hidden beneath the shallow water of the pool. 

“Bucky,“ Steve whispered, reaching out to him, but Bucky was entranced. 

Coming into view the lower they sank into the massive vault was the most mesmerizing sight any of them had ever beheld. All of them stood frozen, staring at the view before them. Five enormous stones of energy levitated and rotated in the openness of the void. Each gave off a vivid glow of a different color as they circled one another slowly.

“The Heart of Atlantis?” Steve couldn’t figure out what the energy sources were or what they meant now that they had found them. They didn’t look tangible- instead, they appeared to be balls of light burning different colors of the rainbow. 

“C’mon!” Rollins said, jumping onto the ground as the platform lowering them into the vault came to a stop several yards from the mysterious spectacle.

“Wait!” Steve called. “It might be dangerous!”

Bucky didn’t hear any of it. Instead, he fell to his knees, bowing his head to the ground and offering Atlantean prayers to Poseidon.

“Then he’ll go!” Rumlow said, snatching up Bucky from the ground. He cut his wrists loose from their bonds, but the moment Bucky opened his eyes, the prince seemed transfixed. His eyes glowed an eerie, aqua blue to match the crystal around his neck and he began to walk slowly toward the circulating stones.

“Infinity currents,” Bucky seemed to realize at once.

“What was that?” Rollins snapped.

“N-nothing,” Steve stammered as he watched Bucky. 

Bucky was walking forward transfixed, and then he reached the center of the area where the glowing stone circled round above his head. 

He turned to look back at Steve and Steve lunged forward. 

“Hold on, Lover Boy,” Rumlow said, snatching Steve by the shirt and hauling his back. “Let’s see what happens to him.”

“Bucky!” Steve yelled, but Bucky seemed to be far away. 

Then at once, Bucky’s feet came off the ground. He began to be levitated upward and toward the stones as Steve stood by helplessly watching.

The colors suddenly started to spin more quickly, moving faster and faster around Bucky’s floating body and giving off radiant beams of light in every direction until Rumlow, Rollins, and Steve had to all hide their faces. With the spinning came a loud, high pitched noise, and it grew louder and louder until they were all covering their ears and hiding their eyes. Steve’s heart beat faster and harder until he felt like his whole chest was going to burst. That or he was going to pass out. All of the men were cowering as they closed their eyes and covered their ears. The light coming from where Bucky was hovering several feet above the sound was throwing angelic shades on every wall and rocky surface around them. And then suddenly the glowing stones all moved inward toward Bucky. He didn’t even seem aware of them. He was staring blankly and then closed his eyes as the colors began to overcome his body, sinking beneath his skin and causing the vault to become eerily quiet after such chaos the moment before. 

The other men hazarded a glance toward where the glowing stones had been. Steve’s eyes went wide at the sight. 

The stones weren’t there anymore. Left in their place was only Bucky, glowing brightly and slowly being lowered back down to the shallow water beneath his feet. Everything about him radiated an incandescent rainbow of lights. As his bare feet touched the earth, he opened his eyes and the blue from the crystal still hanging around his neck shone outward. 

Bucky walked forward as if he didn’t see them and Rumlow reached out for him as if to take his chance at some kind of new world discovery, but Steve snapped, “Don’t touch him!”

Bucky stepped back onto the platform that had brought them into the vault and it began to move so the other three men all scrambled to jump on too and were carried out of the vault as if it never happened.

—⍟-⍟-⍟— 

Namor had been placed on a bed with Sam looking over him concerned when the others returned with Bucky from the vault. Namor took one look across the courtyard, saw Bucky, and seized Sam’s arm tightly.

“He can’t-“ 

Steve rushed to Namor and fell down beside the round daybed he’d been placed on.

“What’s happening to him?” he begged, but Namor only looked over with cold and sorrowful eyes at his younger brother.

“I have failed him,” he said in a tone more defeated than he had spoken to them so far. “The Infinity Stones are not meant to be tampered with, but should they sense they are being threatened. They will do what they must to protect themselves.”

“They- They’re protecting Bucky?”

“No, they sensed Bucky was safe, but they are _using_ him. If he stays bound to the energies for too long, they will burn through him, consume his life, and then search for another.”

Steve looked over at where the gentle whirlpool had now returned peacefully to the center of the pool.

“That’s why they were hidden.”

“They were left to us by Poseidon to protect Atlantis,” Namor explained. “With them, we can power this nation for all of eternity. But we were greedy, too ambitious. We used them to seclude ourselves. Used one to create a leviathan to protect our borders. Used another to build marbled ships that could fly and industrialize the whole city with their energy. When we started making weapons, our ancestors knew we had gone too far. One stone was given to everyone housed in a small crystal vial-“ Namor motioned to the one Steve had borrowed from Becca just hours before. “And the others were locked away forever. Or so we thought. But they need one another to stay powerful. Their energies feed off of one another. And removing one slowly causes the world they have helped create and build to die. For years, Bucky has wanted nothing more than to find a reason why the infinity current was dying. Why lights go dark and water stops running and fog sometimes overtakes our sky.”

“You don’t think it would have been better to tell him?”

Namor shook his head. “Only descendants of the ancient royal family of Atlantis can handle the infinity stones. My father married Bucky’s mother when I was a young boy and Bucky was only a toddler. He’s always seen us as brothers, but he knows the blood in his veins makes him the one who will have to sit on this throne when he is ready. And he would know he had to protect the stones. So I knew telling him would be his downfall.”

Steve swallowed thickly and looked over at Sam, but Sam’s head jerked up to look to where Bucky and the team had been.

“Uh, guys, where did they go?”

—⍟-⍟-⍟—

Steve and Sam found everyone as they were boarding the submarine the team had arrived on earlier. Rollins and Rumlow closed the door on a metal chamber where Bucky had been concealed within. As they closed the door and locked it, the glass window in the front frosted over with a cloud of energy from Bucky’s radiating body, but he didn’t seem to even realize what was going on around him.

“Stop! You can’t do this!” Steve screamed, running toward the ship, but he was pushed back by Rollins aiming a gun at his face.

“Stay back, Mr. Rogers!” Peter yelled in warning, and then Thor pushed Steve aside. Steve didn’t even know if it was to save him or prevent him from reaching Bucky, but it didn’t matter.

“Fine,” he answered dejectedly. “So this is how it is. You’re all fine wiping out an entire civilization, but hey, you’ll be rich!” Steve looked around helplessly. 

Peter turned his back to Steve and started helping to get things ready to go. 

“Peter,” Steve called. “I thought you were a really good kid, but if you can sleep at night knowing that you helped take the lives of so many innocent people, then hey, maybe I was wrong.”

He noticed Thor helping to strap in the chamber holding Bucky and he spoke to him next. 

“Thor, demolitions, yeah? That was supposed to be if we ran into anything underwater that needed to be destroyed, you know, if it was preventing us from reaching Atlantis. Rock and debris, or at least I assumed. But we reached Atlantis alright, and now you’re fine destroying people instead. You saved my cat from a drowning ship, but you’re unwilling to save a whole civilization.”

“Get off your soapbox, Rogers!” Rumlow called as Natasha said quietly, “We’re ready.” He pushed her aside to come back into the stone dock and push a finger into Steve’s chest. “You’re a scientist, aren’t you? You’ve read Darwin. This is natural selection and today, we’re helping it along.”

Steve gritted his teeth and clenched his hands, but Rumlow just scoffed.

Rumlow pretended to think to himself for a moment, before counting on his fingers. 

“I know I’m forgetting something here. Let’s see. I’ve got the cargo-“ He ticked off a finger. “The crystal-” Another finger. “The crew-” He ticked off a third finger and then put up a fourth. “Oh yeah.” Then he swung and punched Steve in the stomach before Steve even knew what was happening.

Steve doubled over in pain as his satchel slipped from his shoulder and crashed down to the ground. Rumlow shoved at his shoulder to get him to fall completely to the ground and Steve felt his glasses fall from his face.

“Look at it this way, Rogers,” Commander Rumlow said, stepping forward onto Steve’s glasses. Steve watched one lens break and a template wire flatten in the wrong direction. “You were the man who most wanted to discover Atlantis and now you get to become a part of it. You get to cherish this historic find for the rest of your life.” He smirked. “Which I imagine won’t be very long now that we’ve got, what did you call him? The Heart of Atlantis?.”

Steve picked up his glasses and tried to straighten out the wire template so he could put them back on, but with the wire warped they felt a little uneven, and with the lens cracked, one side didn’t do him any favours. 

“Let’s move, people!” Rollins called when Rumlow turned around and motioned for the large glass hatch to be closed on the submarine.

“That was an order!” Rumlow echoed when the others didn’t move, and sluggishly the team began to pile on.

Steve looked at the ground and realized the journal had also fallen from his satchel. The old leather book had fallen open to where the loose pages and maps and things had been stuffed into the pack, and this time, Steve looked down and focused on a photo given to him by his grandfather. He had brought it with him paperclipped into the journal, but now it was sticking out as if it were there to remind Steve about the determination and resolve needed to fight for something bigger and more important than himself. He squared his jaw, winced a little, and moved to pick himself up from the ground when a hand shot out to offer him a little assistance.

Steve glanced up to see Peter looking annoyed.

Then Dr. Banner stepped over and picked up Steve’s journal and began to pack things neatly back into it.

Steve took it with a confused look and then looked back at the submarine in time to see Thor step off the craft. He came to stand between Steve and Sam and he put his arm around Steve protectively as Carol stepped to the other side of him and did the same. 

Clint seemed to really contemplate matters before running his hands through his hair, pulling on it until it stuck up every direction, and letting out a big sigh. “We’re all gonna die,” he lamented, but then Wanda tugged on his arm and they both walked from the submarine and onto the dock to join Steve and the rest of the team.

Natasha looked at the chamber holding Bucky and stayed put.

“Oh, come on, guys!” Rumlow yelled at the team. “We are this close to the biggest payday of our lives and now is when you choose to grow a conscience?!”

“We’ve done a lot of things we aren’t proud of, Mr. Rumlow,” Peter called out. 

“Robbed graves,” Carol muttered.

“Blown up historical sites,” Thor added. 

“Plundered tombs,” Clint chimed.

“Illegally smuggled artifacts,” Sam reminded. 

“Double parked?” Wanda tried. 

Peter cleared his throat. “But all those times, no one ever got hurt!”

“If that’s the way you want it, suit yourself. We’ll keep your shares for ourselves!” Rumlow walked to the front of the submarine and began pressing buttons until the engine purred to life and the glass covering closed. The last thing they saw before the submarine sank beneath the water was Natasha turning to keep watch of the chamber holding Bucky.


	9. Chapter 9

“What’s the plan, Cap?” Sam asked, turning to look at Steve. 

“Huh?” Steve had to blink and wipe tears from his eyes before being able to look at the other man. 

“I followed you in. I’ll follow you out. What’s your plan?”

Steve was caught off guard as the waterfalls around them began to stop flowing, becoming small trickles the farther Bucky moved from the heart of the city.

Steve motioned around them. “This place, these people are all about to die. Starting with him.” He pointed to where Bucky had disappeared in the submarine along with Rumlow, Rollins, and Natasha. 

Sam looked at the team. “Then I guess we gotta stop them.”

A hand landed on Steve’s shoulder and he looked behind him to see Namor standing there. He was holding his side, but standing up strongly.

“This is my fault,” the prince confessed. “I should have told him years ago, warned him of the location and the dangers.”

“Well, I think most of it is definitely my fault. I’m the one who brought everyone here,” Steve argued back. “If not for my determination to hunt this place down, they wouldn’t have even been here.”

“Really?” another voice spoke up from across the docks. “They steal my brother and you two are going to debate whose fault it is?” 

Steve immediately recognized Becca from where she stood with her hand on her hip a few yards away. 

“It’s only your fault if you stand there and don’t do anything to stop it,” she insisted and then made a beckoning motion with her arm. “If you wanna stop them, you’ve gotta follow me. Hurry!”

Becca began to run and the rest of the team followed. Steve recognized the destination before they arrived. It was almost the same place where Bucky had brought him earlier to get him to help with the flying vehicle. 

“We’ll use these!” she announced, bringing them into an area that was filled with similar vehicles to the one Steve and Bucky had crash-landed earlier. 

“They’re in a submarine! How are these going to help?!” Steve cried, but Becca scoffed and reached to a switch beside the steering wheel of the closest vehicle. A glass covering came over the top and immediately Steve’s eyes went wide. “Holy shit!” he laughed with delight. “Okay, guys! Here’s what you do!”

Becca grabbed her crystal from around Steve’s neck and Namor took his necklace to one of the vehicles as well.

Steve began to shout out instructions as each person jumped into a vehicle and let either the prince or princess start it up for them. Then they sealed the lids and splashed through the surface of the water.

“We’ve gotta go after them!” Steve said, waving for Namor and Becca to take vehicles of their own.

“You have to stay here,” Namor told Becca sternly. “You have done enough.”

She heaved a heavy sigh as she watched him jump into a vehicle of his own. 

“Bring him back,” she told her brother sternly before he sealed the top of his submarine.

She looked at Steve sliding into one of the last remaining vehicles and slipped the crystal back from around her neck. “You should hold onto this. It’ll be stronger the closer you get to Bucky.”

Steve took it and used it to start his vehicle before placing it back around his neck.

“I’ll do my best.”

“Save my brother,” she told him, taking a step back as Steve grabbed onto the steering wheel, sent her a nod, and sped into the water after the others. 

—⍟-⍟-⍟— 

The vehicles all went different directions- small, personal-sized submarines trying to find one made for an entire team of explorers. In theory, it should have been easy, but the ocean surrounding Atlantis was filled with other submarines, anchors for surface level boats, people swimming, and worst of all, the circular rings of land that surrounded one another outside the center of the city. The vehicles the team were speeding with were having to dodge and swerve everything in their paths, all while trying to find a well-armed thief stealing the prince of the nation.

However, Steve knew they were getting close when the crystal started to shine the color it had been when he had first seen Bucky wearing it.

Suddenly, he spun a corner around a canal opening and there in the distance sped the submarine carrying Bucky and the mercenaries. 

The smaller vehicle may have moved so fast that it nearly hit Steve and Bucky earlier that day, but that kind of speed would come in handy while trying to catch up, so Steve floored the pedal and instantly was thrown against the back of the seat where he sat. But he also caught up to the mercenary’s submarine in seconds.

He didn’t even think before crashing his little submarine into the side of the much larger one. He crashed the smaller one into the window of the larger one and the only thing that happened was that he jolted back.

He did it a second time, this time much more ready for the impact, but again, the glass didn’t even crack. And worse, the fleeing submarine started to lift from the water. 

Apparently that was a universal trait of Atlantean vehicles- anything that could go beneath the water could also become airborne.

Steve hit the switch on his vehicle to follow the submarine to the surface and out into the air. Water flew off in every direction as the craft carrying Bucky sped off through the sky. For a few moments, it felt like only Steve was chasing after them, but soon enough, the other members of the team seemed to figure out the situation, and soon everyone was airborne and on the chase. 

Wherever Commander Rumlow led, the rest of the team would zip behind. Left and right and down and back up, quick corners and sharp turns- everyone could take them and they did over and over until Commander Rumlow took his vehicle straight upward. He climbed higher into the sky until he nearly reached the top of the watery dome and then he flew close to the volcanic walls. Steve wanted to close his eyes as he climbed that high after him, but he kept them on his target.

Carol whipped her vehicle around and came at Rumlow from in front while all of the other vehicles kept him blocked off from all sides and Steve was behind. His only option seemed completely improbable, but somehow nobody was terribly surprised when Rumlow drove the craft directly over the edge of the volcano wall and into the bowels of the abyss itself.

“What the hell-“

Steve jerked his vehicle sideways and then accelerated to the top of the wall of the volcano as well. 

“Any last words?” he asked himself sarcastically. “Besides ‘I wish I had a different plan?!’”

Steve led the team up and over the precipice and into the dark belly of the volcano. Seeing the outside of it surrounding part of Atlantis was one thing, but seeing it from this angle was entirely different. And not just because one was significantly more dangerous than the other.

Rumlow dove down with his vehicle, swerving left and right and trying to lose Steve, but the entire team was on his tail.

Had it been any other stolen goods, Steve would have been contemplating the seriousness of ganging up instead of being led to simply knock the larger craft from the air and into the abyss, but this was a prince and a volcano. One wrong move and they could ignite the entire thing and the volcano could come alive and blow. Furthermore, Bucky was aboard the vehicle with Rumlow and crew. And taking that down meant not only danger to Rumlow, Rollins, and Natasha, but to Bucky and therefore all of Atlantis.

They had to get them from the craft. There had to be a way to make them surrender.

Steve began to press buttons and pull levers in the cockpit of his own vehicle, hoping for something, anything to help them turn the tide of their current battle, when he suddenly hit a button that sent a blinding beam of light from the front of craft the same way the light beams had done on the submarine earlier- the submarine that now was in the hands of Rumlow and his team.

As if they had just been reminded, an instant beam of light retaliated from the submarine. 

Shrieks from every direction could be heard bouncing off the walls of the inside of the volcano and Steve shut the light beam off of his vehicle immediately to keep from blinding himself or anyone else.

Swerving every direction suddenly became even more dangerous when Steve looked up from the cockpit of his own vehicle and was hit directly with a beam of light. He cried out and closed his eyes on instinct before trying to open them again. He could barely see anything except bright technicolor lights burning in his field of vision. His eyes watered everywhere.

In an effort to escape the dangers of flying blindly, Steve immediately told the vehicle to fly higher, up above the rest of the commotion and out of the immediate line of vision for the larger craft. 

Steve could hear the other vehicles getting closer and farther away as they continued trying to wear Rumlow’s team out or get them to surrender. Flashes of light beams kept being turned on and off and Steve didn’t know their origin, but he kept trying to see the chaos happening down beneath where his own craft hovered. 

The edges of his vision seemed to clear more quickly than the rest of his view, and he peered down beneath his hovering craft and did his best to make out the spectacle.

Light beams were flashing back and forth between many of the different vehicles’ drivers and the larger craft as all of them raced and swerved in different directions. 

Then all of a sudden, from the corner of his eye, Steve could swear he saw the glass hatch on the large vehicle begin to open while in midair.

With his eyes watering and vision spotty, he couldn’t be positive what he was seeing until it became apparent that there was a definitive change in the swift jerking motions of the vehicle. 

Steve shook his head, wiped his bleary eyes, and lowered the vehicle he was in back to the quickly organizing chaos.

“What the hell?” he asked again as he finally made out what was going on. The vehicle was moving significantly slower, and now out of the opened glass hatch, Natasha could be seen fighting against Rollins and Rumlow.

Sam pulled his vehicle next to Steve’s. 

“Uh, Cap, you all right? You may wanna get back to leading your squadron here. Seems like the thieves have some kind of power struggle going on.”

“Their light got me right in my eyes,” Steve said, wiping them again as they watered. “I can’t see shit.”

Sam looked concerned at Steve and then looked back at said power struggle down below them near the floor of the volcano.

“Holy hell, Steve,” Sam suddenly said excitedly toward the man in the next vehicle. “Natasha’s kickin’ their asses. Did you know she could fight that well?”

“She looks like she wants to kick my ass every time I see her. Which of our team was so unfortunate as to-“

“No, no, she just-“ Sam actually gasped. “She beat Rollins. She’s got the hatch open. She kicked him out of the submarine.” 

“Natasha?” Steve double checked. 

“Yes, Natasha. Now she’s fighting with Rumlow.”

Steve shook his head. “I can barely see, but somebody’s gotta get down there. If the hatch is open, we have a chance of stealing Bucky back.”

“Bucky?”

“Prince James! C’mon!” Steve switched his vehicle back into flying mode and did his best to see through his still spotted vision as he took off down toward the larger craft. 

Sam flew after him and the other vehicles continued to swerve around and attempt to blind Rumlow with their lights and crash their vehicles into the sides of the vehicle carrying Bucky in an attempt to throw Rumlow and Natasha off balance.

When they got close enough, Steve threw his vehicle back into park and let it hover over the larger one. He shook his head, still trying to clear his vision, and jumped from the small vehicle he was in and directly into the open glass hatch of the larger one.

Natasha nearly kicked him by accident and then she yelled. 

“Help me, Rogers!”

Steve turned toward Rumlow just in time to see him swing the axe toward him and Natasha.

They managed to duck and jump back just in time, but Rumlow began swinging again. 

Steve jumped down low and kicked at his leg, sending the man tumbling. It gave Natasha enough time to run to the capsule where Bucky was being kept and begin to work the locks open. 

“Natasha!” Steve warned as Rumlow tried to swing at her from the ground. Natasha jumped away and then Steve was back up, fighting the man again. 

Everyone in the volcano knew when Natasha got the chamber open. The light from the crystals shone so brightly from Bucky that they gave the entire place an iridescent glow.

Rumlow jumped to his feet with the axe, taking another swing at Natasha as she got the door open, but instead of hitting Natasha, he struck Bucky firmly in the left shoulder. 

Then Rumlow let out an unearthly shriek.

Everyone ceased their light beams and crazed flying to turn their vehicles toward the larger one in the middle.

Steve watched with wide eyes as the axe that had hit Bucky’s shoulder dropped to the ground and a sharp, bright blue crystallization began to overtake Rumlow’s body. First the hand that had been holding the axe turned to crystal, and then it quickly spread up his arm. The crystallization spread over his shoulder and down his chest, up his neck and over his face. In only a few seconds, Commander Rumlow’s entire body was a blue crystal and Natasha didn’t hesitate. She kicked his new crystallized form over the edge of the glass hatch opening, sending him plummeting several feet to the unforgiving volcanic floor below. His entire being shattered to pieces like bits of broken glass.

It never phased Natasha. She turned back to Bucky the same time as Steve, but something had changed. Bucky still seemed dazed, but he was looking at his shoulder where the axe had hit. And then the flying submarine began to free fall from beneath them.

Steve, Bucky, and Natasha all suddenly hit the ceiling and then bashed into the wall and then floor and then wall again of the vehicle as it fell powerlessly through the air. Whatever force had kept it hovering had been lost when Bucky’s body had been attacked, and seemingly Bucky couldn’t get that control back.

All three hit the floor of the craft as it landed with a loud crash at the bottom of the volcano. It took a few seconds for Steve and Natasha to find their bearings, but once they did, they saw Bucky. He was clinging to them both- one hand on Steve’s wrist and one only on Natasha’s fingers.

“I’m- I’m fine,” Steve said, blinking a few times. “Even my eyes. I can see fine.” He shoved at Natasha’s shoulder. “You’re fine, right? He-“ He looked at where Bucky held his wrist. “He saved us.”

The hand encircling Steve’s wrist was iridescent and glowing, and Natasha reached gently to touch Bucky’s arm when suddenly a loud boom sounded behind them. 

They looked over, ears somehow not ringing despite the proximity, and saw what the noise was. A small explosion had been detonated by the crash, something that had fallen from Thor’s bag he had left onboard the craft.

“Natasha, more of that’s gonna go off,” Steve said, eyeing the bag only meters away from them.

“C’mon!” Natasha replied with a jerk of Steve’s hand and both pulled at Bucky.

Bucky sat barely moving. He hadn’t seemed to hear the explosion at all and wasn’t responsive to the sudden begging and pleading of Steve and Natasha as they tried to pull him toward the glass hatch. 

“Bucky, this place is dangerous!” Steve was yelling. 

“We’re trying to help you!” Natasha cried. 

“C’mon!” came Sam’s voice from just outside. 

“This thing’s gonna blow!” Carol’s voice added. 

“We have to get away from the aircraft!” Steve pleaded as Bucky remained unresponsive. 

“We have to get away from the whole volcano!” Clint yelled. “That bag of explosives goes off, it’s gonna set the whole thing off.”

Thor landed solidly inside the opening of the vehicle, his boots hitting the ground in a thud that made the whole craft creak. 

“You have to leave now!” he insisted. He scooped up Natasha, forcing her hands away from Bucky and helped to pass off her protesting body to Carol and Sam. Then he grabbed onto Steve who was clinging to Bucky’s whole body.

“You have to come with us,” Steve was begging. “You can’t stay here. It isn’t safe here. Please, Bucky, c’mon, please!”

“Steve!” came a voice of authority, and suddenly, Namor’s vehicle came speeding up to the mouth of the hatch and he jumped in. “Leave him! He will have to protect himself! You have to leave him!”

Namor was then at Steve’s side and instantly pushing for him to evacuate.

“You have to save yourself!” he screamed at him, prying at his hands until he and Thor could wrench Steve away from the catatonic prince.

They barely had him removed from the craft when the first explosion went off. Then a series of them began to go off, flinging debris and fire every direction. “We have to get out of here!” Namor yelled at the crew as he looked directly at a teary-eyed Steve.

“He can’t even hear us,” Steve barely managed through a tight throat and watery eyes.

“This isn’t your fight!” Namor screamed at him, before using the crystal and commanding both vehicles to fly them to safety. The others followed swiftly and nobody looked back as they felt the heat of the larger craft’s explosion against their backs.

“This isn’t fair,” Steve wept, grabbing to hold onto Namor’s tattooed arm for support.

He reached and ran his hand over Steve’s fingers. “He’s protected already,” he told Steve. “Those infinity stones are protecting themselves and right now, they need Bucky. He should be okay. He’s a good man.”

Even as he said it, his eyes grew teary as well and they turned to watch the fiery flames engulfing the craft slowly leak out onto the ground around it.

Wanda pulled her vehicle next to Steve’s and reached out and took his hand. The contact made him blink and look at her. “You’ve done all you can do,” she told him. “Now you have to lead the rest of us.”

Steve’s hands felt like lead as he pulled away from Wanda and began to operate the vehicle again. It should have been high speed and maybe it was as all of the vehicles flew away from the erupting volcano, but all Steve registered was leaving Bucky behind.


	10. Chapter 10

The volcano erupted for what felt like forever, but it never seemed to go anywhere. The magma burst free into streams of burning lava that flowed from the sides of the volcano endlessly, but somehow it never reached the city. It never polluted the blue ocean waters surrounding the city. It never darkened the air.

Namor took the team back to the heart of the city where he and Becca knelt down and prayed. They prayed for what felt like forever while the rest of the team stood around and watched the eruption and Steve sat frozen and peered at the place where Bucky’s hand had wrapped so tightly around his wrist.

Their actions were only broken when up from the volcano suddenly came a huge spout of water. It seemed to wash away all of the lava spewing forth and cleaned the site of anything burning or smoking. The whole area was filled with water, slowly pouring over the sides of the volcano and into the surrounding ocean. 

“Poseidon has heard us,” Namor said with a hand on Becca’s arm. 

“Bucky!” she gasped. 

Everyone watched as Bucky was lifted from the center of the volcano and carried on a beam of light over to the courtyard. Then slowly and carefully, he descended toward the ground. 

Steve hurried to the beam of light and held out his arms toward Bucky. Then the light vanished and Bucky fell gently into Steve’s arms. 

The glow from his body was gone. The infinity stones that had been within him now hovered above their heads. Everyone watched as they made their way outward toward the outer rings of the city. Everyone except Steve. Steve was watching Bucky who clung to him while he trembled and sweat and panted.

“You’re okay,” Steve soothed. “You’re safe.”

Namor and Becca both stepped closer to Bucky and placed their hands on him as well. His whole body was clammy and cold. They noticed his crystal now shone with a mix of the different infinity stones. Steve set Bucky down very gently onto his feet and helped support him as he shook leaning against Steve’s body. Then Steve removed the crystal necklace he was wearing and held it back out to Becca. She took it gratefully and turned to look at Namor. All of them were aglow with the mixture of colors and Becca smiled at Steve and nodded.

“Well done.”

Bucky shuttered and blinked his eyes open as the sounds of running water began resounding all around them.

“Bucky,” Becca said, getting his attention with a soft touch and then motioning outward toward the city.

Lights began coming on as far as they could see, lighting the streets, the homes, the deep pools of water beneath every walkway and beneath every waterfall.

“You did it,” she told him, and Bucky smiled softly and didn’t say a word. 

—⍟-⍟-⍟— 

Atlantis at half-power had been beautiful, but Atlantis at full power was absolutely breathtaking. Steve couldn’t stop marveling at every turn as he spent his last few hours exploring the place with Bucky at his side.

Bucky had Steve’s hand clasped tightly in his own and he kept teaching Steve words and phrases as they went.

“It means _‘Fish Market,’”_ Bucky laughed as a man welcomed them. “And that-“ he pointed out a vendor who was advertising loudly, “is _‘Lobster for sale. Freshly caught. Best in town.’”_

Steve grinned and wrote the words out in a journal in both English and Atlantean. Steve wasn’t leaving without leaving some kind of helpful key to their native language behind.

“What’s that?” he asked, motioning to a building not far off.

“That’s where I’m taking you,” Bucky answered rather than telling Steve what the man outside was announcing.

“Buck-“ Steve managed, but Bucky just pulled him along with a laugh into the marble walled building.

“Welcome,” he translated after they were greeted and Steve scribbled it down before looking around carefully. Everything on display was the same. Leather string necklaces holding glowing multicolored crystals. 

“This is where they come from,” Steve realized in wonder. “Everyone’s crystals.”

Bucky picked up one from a display and held it up to Steve’s chest before saying something in Atlanean.

“What’s that?” Steve asked, pencil poised over the page. 

“Stay with me.”

Steve had already written the first three letters before it hit him. 

“What?” He looked up through the glasses Bucky had repaired for him.

“Stay with me,” Bucky repeated. “Stay here. Don’t go back to the Surface.”

Steve realized the crystal Bucky was holding out was an offering and he took it like the sacred gift it was.

“Yes,” Steve nodded, peering first down at the crystal and then up at Bucky. “Yes, of course. _Please.”_

“Good,” Bucky replied before surging forward and kissing Steve. 

“Whoa, whoa,” Steve said, pulling back. He glanced around to see that the shop owners were only peeking at them with encouraging little grins and he looked back at Bucky. “That’s gonna take some getting used to.”

Bucky smiled and obviously decided the best way to acclimate Steve was to kiss him again, but at least the second time, Steve was ready and kissed him back.

—⍟-⍟-⍟— 

“I’m sorry we can’t do more,” Bucky told the team as he placed a crystal necklace around each explorer’s neck.

“You’ve done more than enough,” Sam promised, looking at his necklace. “We don’t deserve all of this.”

“You did what I brought you here to do,” Bucky explained with a flourish of his hand toward the bright and repaired Atlantis. “All of the infinity stones were found and they can work together now to restore Atlantis to its former glory.”

“It looked so beautiful when we arrived. I didn’t imagine it could be this much more green and bright and alive,” Bruce spoke as he looked around. 

“And I definitely don’t think you can credit us with reuniting all of the infinity stones. Not after the way it happened,” Natasha added apologetically. 

Bucky looked at her with an indulgent smile. “I hate to say that maybe it was the push we needed?”

“No!” she argued. “Rumlow tried to kill you!”

Bucky held up his left arm that Rumlow had tried to take off with the axe. The veins in it still shimmered with the different colors of the infinity stones, but otherwise, it seemed perfectly fine.

“I’m still in tact,” he assured her as he held out two extra necklaces with glowing crystals. “And besides, you helped me.”

“These two for the men you’ve left repairing your submarines,” Bucky said as he put one over Clint’s head and then handed him the extras. Steve held out a third one to Natasha.

“And this one for Howard. To thank him for sending me on this journey. And to let him know it was worth it.”

“The energy from the crystals should power your crafts home,” Bucky assured. “But we’ll take you as far as the Surface just to be sure you have a safe journey. Then you can take those back and don’t speak of this place, yeah?”

Peter’s eyes were huge as he watched men carry gold and jewels in marble crates onto the submarine the Atlanteans were preparing to use to take them home.

“Mr, uh, Prince Bucky, Sir,” he asked. “What if people question where we got the treasure?”

“Poseidon guards Atlantis,” Bucky said confidently, and this time, no one thought he was crazy for invoking the name of a god. “Only those to whom we reveal our home will be able to find it. We are protected from fortune seekers and treasure hunters and all outside presence alike. Without permission, no one will be able to find farther than the marble stairs where we found you. But if you need to, just tell them you found it at the bottom of the sea.”

“And you’re safe now?” Wanda asked, and Bucky nodded assuredly.

“We’re very safe now. Thanks to all of you. So long as the sea lasts, so shall Atlantis.”

The team took turns hugging Bucky and then hugging Steve, each promising to never forget them, and then they all departed as if they had never even been there.

—⍟-⍟-⍟—

Bucky led Steve inside to the lavish quarters they had moved into together.

“Namor thinks I’m ready to take the throne,” Bucky announced as they climbed barefoot up dark, marble stairs. “I was scared before, scared that I was going to let everyone down because Atlantis was dying and it would do so under my rule. And I thought there was nothing I could do to help it.” 

They reached the top and peered out of a large circular window at the city below.

“But it’s better now,” he said with a smile toward Steve as he reached for his hand.

Alpine hurried toward them and rubbed at Bucky’s ankles. The prince let go of Steve to scoop the cat up in an instant and buried his face in the feline’s fur.

“He’s the whole reason I met you, I think,” Steve admitted. “I was down there on those bottom steps trying to make sure he didn’t drink the saltwater when I slipped and fell in. And that’s when you found us.”

Bucky looked up and shrugged. “We were already coming your way, but I’ll give him credit. You are the best creature,” he told Alpine. “I know you can’t hear me, but I mean it. The best! the best!” Bucky tapped the cat’s nose playfully.

“Can’t hear you?”

“No, of course not. Cats can’t hear.”

“Of course they can,” Steve laughed.

Bucky arched an eyebrow and placed Alpine down on the marble floor. “Not this one.” He clapped his hands loudly behind Alpine’s head and Steve’s eyes widened as the cat gave no indication of having heard it at all. 

“I always thought he was just too superior to me to pay attention when I called him,” Steve admitted and Bucky laughed. 

“No, of course not. He loves you,” Bucky said, nodding toward Alpine who then started rubbing at Steve’s ankles. Steve reached down and scratched at the cat’s head and shoulder blades.

“I’m nearly convinced that the whole reason you asked me to stay was just so you could keep my cat,” Steve joked.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Bucky said with a shake of his head. “That’s only half the reason.”

Steve scoffed playfully as Bucky took both of his hands. 

“The other half was so I could do this.” Bucky took Steve’s hands and pulled his arms around Bucky’s waist before wrapping his own arms around Steve’s shoulders and leaning in for a kiss.

Steve pulled away. “That’s- that’s a good reason,” he agreed before diving back in to kiss Bucky with fervor as the rush of waterfalls sounded all around them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Come hang out with us and talk Stucky [on this Stucky discord channel](https://discord.gg/b4sGMkcDXn).  
> .
> 
> Or come yell at me about Stucky on tumblr [here](https://ribbonsflyingoutthewindow.tumblr.com).  
> .
> 
> ♥ you all!

**Author's Note:**

> Don't forget to check out [the art Brittany made us](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29369841) (may contain spoilers for those unfamiliar with the story).


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